Simulation and Data Lab Neuroscience

The Simulation and Data Lab (SDL) Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers with complementary backgrounds and skills, dedicated to supporting neuroscientists in using High-Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud and data resources for their research.
Over the past years, HPC has become increasingly important in neuroscientific research. HPC resources are used for the processing and analysis of high-resolution data sets, for the simulation of large and complex neuronal network models, or for analyzing the simulation and/or experimental results, amongst other applications. We bring neuroscience and HPC closer together through comprehensive support oriented to the needs of the neuroscience community.
Our expertise in both neuroscience and HPC is based on in-house research and development, as well as collaborative joint projects with national and international partners. We develop simulation, data analysis and visualization technologies for the neuroscience community, and we port and optimize codes for efficient use of current and future supercomputers.
Research and support activities include
Developing simulation, data analysis and visualization technology for neuroscience
Porting and optimizing user codes for supercomputers
Deployment and maintenance of neuroscience software on the JSC supercomputers
Supporting the preparation of computing time proposals and applications for test access
Technical reviews of computing time proposals
Mentoring of computing time projects
Tutorials, courses and workshops
Partners and Projects
As the Bernstein Facility for High Performance Simulation and Data Analytics, the SDL Neuroscience provides its expertise in simulation and data analysis technologies to the Bernstein Network for Computational Neuroscience.
The SDL Neuroscience is part of the Helmholtz Joint Lab "Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain (SMHB)" and the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA).
EBRAINS is a digital European Research Infrastructure designed to advance and accelerate progress in neuroscience and brain health. This innovative infrastructure, a legacy of the Human Brain Project (HBP), is an ecosystem where researchers, clinicians and experts from various disciplines converge to explore and analyze brain complexity – from molecular and cellular levels to the functioning of the entire organ. As part of the collaboration, the SDL Neuroscience coordinates, plans, and integrates access to base infrastructures, including HPC, cloud, and storage resources, and organises the project-wide helpdesk for user support.
EBRAINS Germany, the German National Node of the EBRAINS digital research infrastructure for neuroscience, brings together strong expertise in computational neuroscience, clinical research, and computer science. It marks a significant milestone in advancing collaborative research efforts in Europe. EBRAINS Germany partners offer unique open science tools for neuroscience, medical applications, and industry. The SDL Neuroscience coordinates EBRAINS Germany and contributes to its research and development activities.
The overarching objective of the Virtual Brain Twin project is to design and validate a specialised ecosystem for personalised treatment of psychiatric disorders, utilising a patient-specific multiscale virtual brain model. The SDL Neuroscience contributes to the architecture definition, implementation, deployment and operations, as well as to the multiscale simulation and optimization of the virtual brain twin models.
The eBRAIN-Health project delivers a distributed research platform for modeling and simulating complex neurobiological phenomena of human brain function and dysfunction in a data protection compliant environment. The SDL Neuroscience contributes with software development, development of optimization tools for models of whole brain dynamcis as well as to the deployment of tools and services on HPC resources.
The Human Brain Project (2011-2023) was a European Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship Initiative. It pioneered a new paradigm in brain research at the interface of computing and technology and created the EBRAINS research infrastructure. Over the past ten years, the SDL Neuroscience contributed to the HBP and EBRAINS by developing requirements specifications, validation, and user support.