Researchers come together at the EBRAINS Users Days 2026 in Heidelberg
The neuroscience community met in Heidelberg to explore how EBRAINS resources and services are supporting brain research.
The EBRAINS community came together in Heidelberg on 6 and 7 October for the EBRAINS Users Days 2026, bringing together researchers, infrastructure experts and other members of the neuroscience community. The two-day event offered an opportunity to learn about new EBRAINS services, discuss challenges around data and knowledge, and exchange experiences of using the research infrastructure.
The Users Days followed the EBRAINS internal meeting “EBRAINS & Friends” on 5 October, which brought together members of EBRAINS 2.0 and other EBRAINS related projects. The meeting provided an opportunity to reflect on EBRAINS 2.0’s achievements and success stories over the past two and a half years, prepare for the project’s final reporting and review, and discuss options for the future of the EBRAINS infrastructure.
The Users Days opened on Tuesday with a welcome from Jan Bjaalie, Chief Infrastructure Officer of EBRAINS, who gave an overview of how EBRAINS resources can support researchers across different stages of the neuroscience research process. The presentation highlighted the range of tools available to researchers working with increasingly complex and data-intensive questions. Bjaalie also presented the next steps for the research infrastructure, including the EBRAINS Roadmap 2026-2036, a process to define strategic priorities for the coming decade of European digital neuroscience. He highlighted the strong interest in the Roadmap process, which has attracted contributions from across the community and is now moving through its next stages.
As Katrin Amunts, EBRAINS Joint CEO, explained, the aim is for EBRAINS to anticipate researchers’ future needs rather than develop tools only once the demand has already emerged:
" We want to develop an infrastructure that is forward-looking, that is not only supporting researchers but has the ambition to foresee what researchers will need in two or three years. You don’t want to develop the tools when somebody is saying ‘I need the tool’; you want to have it ready when the request is coming "
Access to high-performance computing (HPC) was also a focus, with Boris Orth, from the Jülich Supercomputing Center (JSC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), presenting the cloud, storage and HPC infrastructure powering EBRAINS. In an afternoon session, Ekaterina Zossimova (FZJ) presented how the EBRAINS team can help researchers develop a sound proposal for applying for HPC resources for research cases, where local computing power is insufficient.
Complementary research infrastructures
The growing connections between European research infrastructures were another theme of the event. Regina Günster, from Instruct-ERIC, gave a presentation on how to get funded access to advanced technologies for structural biology research. Earlier this year, EBRAINS and Instruct-ERIC signed a Memorandum of Understanding, strengthening multi-scale life science research in Europe.
The two infrastructures offer complementary capabilities, working with data at different levels of scale. As Günster explained:
" We work on different levels of data. Instruct works very much on the basic science data, on very small molecules, but this kind of information is essential if you want to integrate it into larger models, going towards the whole brain. We are both very keen on making sure that metadata is accurately captured, that it is reusable and FAIR. "
Industry connections
Industry was also represented at the Users Days through the newly established EBRAINS Industry Expert Group. Camilia Hoorvash, head of Clinical Applications & Medical Affairs at Positrigo and a member of the Group, has been following EBRAINS through her work in brain imaging and was drawn to the research infrastructure through its work on digital and virtual brain models.
For her, events such as the Users Days are an important opportunity to connect with the EBRAINS community. “It’s amazing to come and network, meet people and brainstorm with them,” she said.
As a member of the Industry Expert Group, she is bringing her experience of moving research innovations towards practical applications.
" We have a really nice handful of members to discuss how we can support EBRAINS to take the next step, and how things developed through the research infrastructure can move from early research prototypes into pilot projects and then further on to scale up into the market. "
Broad range of tools and services
A session on EBRAINS Data and Knowledge services explored how better data sharing and metadata, the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph and emerging AI approaches can help make neuroscience research more findable, connected and reusable. The presentations were followed by a panel discussion and feedback from the audience.
The programme also offered a series of short introductions to different aspects of the EBRAINS RI, showcasing how researchers can prepare and share data, models and software, access high-performance computing resources, and combine tools into workflows across different sites. Sessions also highlighted specialised resources, including medical analytics platforms and tools for cerebellar research, giving participants a broader view of what the infrastructure can offer.
Tutorials Day
The second day of the Users Days was dedicated to hands-on tutorials, covering a broad range of EBRAINS tools and services.
With sessions covering tools and platforms such as TVB, the Medical Informatics Platform (MIP), SpiNNaker and Siibra, the tutorials provided another way for researchers to explore how EBRAINS can become part of their own research workflows.
“The heterogeneity of the interdisciplinary field of brain research poses a particular challenge for designing EBRAINS RI services and bringing them into the labs,” says Michael Denker, from IAS-6 at Forschungszentrum Jülich.
" Events such as the Users Days in Heidelberg are therefore essential: developers and users meet to exchange ideas, train in the use of software tools and services, and gather in hacking sessions to move the platform forward. "
Michael Denker, Tobias Michels and Cristiano Köhler offered a tutorial combining two interactive visual tools for designing simulation and analysis workflows: NEST Desktop and Elephant Lab.
"It was a great opportunity to get hands-on experience with neuromorphic computing using SpiNNaker, explore advanced workflows for analysing brain data with siibra-python, and exchange ideas with the international EBRAINS user community”, says Nataliia Fedorchenko, a researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich and EBRAINS Student Ambassador.
" It was a great opportunity to get hands-on experience with neuromorphic computing using SpiNNaker, explore advanced workflows for analysing brain data with siibra-python, and exchange ideas with the international EBRAINS user community. "
The activities continue in Heidelberg with the EBRAINS Student and Early Career Researcher Networking Event 2026, taking place on 8 October and bringing together students and early career researchers for scientific exchange, networking and career development. The following week, the EBRAINS Virtual Users’ Week, from 12 to 14 October, will offer a series of free online, hands-on tutorials covering a range of EBRAINS tools and services for users at different levels of experience.
Author: Helen Mendes
Contact: press@ebrains.eu
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