Press release
01 Jul 2022A Belgian consortium for EBRAINS
On 14th June, EBRAINS AISBL CEO, Paweł Świeboda, met with the representatives of nine Belgian universities to celebrate the creation of a nation-wide consortium in view of the establishment of an EBRAINS Belgian node. Today, the creation of the Belgian consortium materialises with the full membership of University Hasselt in EBRAINS AISBL. The associate memberships of the 8 remaining universities are expected to be announced in the next couple of months.
Members of EBRAINS have the opportunity to co-design future iterations of EBRAINS’ cutting-edge tools and services. These state-of-the-art capabilities – which cover data sharing, atlasing, modelling, simulation, high-performance computing, and neurorobotics – aim to help European researchers to address major challenges in brain health, benefiting from insights into data science, brain organisation, and artificial intelligence gathered from the EU Flagship Human Brain Project.
Belgian researchers from the universities of the consortium commented on the benefits of the emerging national collaboration and their involvement within the EBRAINS ecosystem.
”EBRAINS is an impressive international network. The Belgian initiative will enhance communication at national level, help develop collaborations at the national and, obviously international level.”
Vrij University of Brussels
“This is a great opportunity to establish conversations and launch initiatives with the Belgian neuroscience community. The potential for international projects with EBRAINS is something I am really looking forward to.”
KuLeuven
“I am happy this finally happens. I had already had the chance to upload my data on the early version of the Knowledge Graph, which is now the EBRAINS knowledge graph. I greatly welcome this opportunity.”
UGent
“I am glad that Belgian neuroscience researchers join the ecosystem of EBRAINS and take up the challenges that are coming up for neuroscience, like the integration of datasets.”
UAntwerpen
“It is very exciting. In EBRAINS, I really like the integration aspect, trying to go from the cell to the whole human brain. With modelling, there is a lot to do. I have been more limited to neuroimaging data and I can see the limit of that. so I hope this will allow us to push the limit of our understanding of the brain.”
Liège University
”It will help to do more interdisciplinary research, involving engineering, medial and psychology students together.”
Head of the Neuroscience Department of Mons University
“I am really looking forward to building a neuroscience and technology ecosystem in Belgium. This is very much needed. The speed in which we managed to deliver some key achievements in the past few months is showcasing how motivated the Belgian actors are to make this happen.”
University Hasselt
“I welcome the enthusiasm of the Belgian brain research community to join EBRAINS. Our mission is to enable scientific breakthroughs and we are pleased to see we have made a significant step in this direction today. By widening our network of members, we also enlarge the scale of the projects that EBRAINS will be able to carry out. The expertise of Belgian universities and researchers in neuroscience, neurology, biotech and biomed innovation will significantly enrich our research infrastructure.”
CEO of Ebrians
EBRAINS is listed on the ESFRI roadmap
About the Human Brain Project
The Human Brain Project (HBP) is the largest brain science project in Europe and stands among the biggest research projects ever funded by the European Union. It is one of the three FET Flagship Projects of the EU. At the interface of neuroscience and information technology, the HBP investigates the brain and its diseases with the help of highly advanced methods from computing, neuroinformatics and artificial intelligence and drives innovation in fields like brain-inspired computing and neurorobotics.
Media Contact
Pedro Teixeira
Tel.: +32 499 90 70 44
pedro.teixeira@ebrains.eu
