Supercomputing and Modelling for the Human Brain - General Assembly 2015

A total of 92 scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and several partner institutions collaborating within the Helmholtz Portfolio Theme “Supercomputing and Modelling for the Human Brain” (SMHB) met for their annual General Assembly on 30 and 31 March at JSC to present and discuss the progress achieved in 2014 and to agree on the next steps in the project.

The SMHB was launched in January 2013 as one of the Portfolio Themes of the Helmholtz Association and was conceived as a Helmholtz contribution to the European Human Brain Project. Its goal is to achieve a better understanding of the organization and functioning of the human brain by developing a realistic brain model. To meet this challenge, an appropriate infrastructure is necessary for HPC and Big Data analytics. The SMHB work plan therefore integrates a wide range of expertise from fundamental neuroscience, brain modelling and simulation, simulation software technology, HPC, large-scale data management, scientific workflows, and interactive visualization and analysis. The SMHB works closely with JSC's Exascale Labs on the co-design of neuroscience applications and HPC technology.

The SMHB General Assembly 2015 was opened by Prof. Wolfgang Marquardt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich, and by the two project speakers, Prof. Katrin Amunts (INM-1) and Prof. Thomas Lippert (JSC). Many examples were presented of the active and fruitful collaboration between the SMHB partners. Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main gave an invited keynote talk on his research in connectomics. A further highlight of this year's meeting was a session in which young scientists introduced their work in short spotlight talks before they went on to discuss it in more depth with interested colleagues in the poster session that followed.
(Contact: Dr. Anne Do Lam Ruschewski)

JSC, 27 May 2015