IST Austria contributes to Human Brain Project

Neuroscientist and IST Austria Professor Peter Jonas is one of the three Austrian collaborators in the Human Brain Project (HBP) which was presented to the public this morning in Brussels. The Human Brain Project as one of the two flagship projects of the Future and Emerging Technologies Initiative (FET) of the European Commission with a total estimated budget of € 1 billion for ten years combines the efforts of approximately 200 research groups in order to reconstruct the human brain by building a computer-based model. For additional information on the other Austrian partners, the Austrian representative in the management of the Human Brain Project consortium, Prof. Alois Saria (Medical University Innsbruck), and Prof. Wolfgang Maass (Technical University Graz) see press release by the Medical University Innsbruck, for more on the HBP see according press release.

Jonas summarized the relevance of his group’s contribution to the HBP as follows: “The HBP heavily relies on quantitative functional data, which is exactly what we can supply.”

The President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Thomas Henzinger, congratulated Jonas on this success: “Peter moved to IST Austria in 2010, initiating neuroscience research at the Institute. This award proves that our growing activities in neuroscience have already achieved recognition in Europe and beyond. We look forward to many new and groundbreaking results from Peter’s group.”