Official Handover of SDL Neuroscience Lead at Joint Lab SMHB General Assembly 2023
After ten successful years, Abigail Morrison officially passed on the role of scientific lead of JSC’s Simulation and Data Lab (SDL) Neuroscience to her successor, Sandra Diaz Pier, to the applause of the General Assembly of the Helmholtz Joint Lab Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain (SMHB), which was held from 4 to 5 April 2023 at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Prof. Morrison, who is also a research group leader at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine – Computational and Systems Neuroscience (INM-6), had led the SDL Neuroscience since it was founded in 2013 as a core element of the Helmholtz Joint Lab SMHB, which at the time was launched as a Helmholtz Portfolio Theme. Under her scientific guidance, the SDL Neuroscience – a high-level support team for neuroscientists and part of the Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience – grew continuously in size and scope, and played key roles in strategic projects such as the European Human Brain Project. Innovative in-house developments such as the Arbor simulator and the NESTML modelling language for the NEST simulator were started during Morrison’s reign. An area she was particularly committed to was the development of neuromorphic computing technology within the Jülich Advanced Computing Architectures (ACA) project and beyond. Morrison also acted as a supervisor for several PhD, master’s, and bachelor’s students working in the SDL Neuroscience.
In Dr. Diaz Pier, an experienced member of the SDL Neuroscience and recognised team leader – with a research focus on the meta-optimisation of bio-inspired networks – has now taken over the scientific lead of the SDL Neuroscience. JSC would like to sincerely thank Abigail Morrison for her excellent work and commitment over the past decade and wishes her successor Sandra all the best for the future in her new role.
Contact: Dr. Boris Orth