The Human Brain Project (HPB) FET Flagship, as part of its multiple R&D activities, pushes the use of most advanced AI techniques for accelerating progress neurosciences and simultaneously develops more empowering robotics and AI approaches inspired by the latest understanding in the human brain, in particular regarding environment awareness and decision making (related budget part is indicated below).
Name in original language
FET Flagship - Human Brain Project
Initiative overview
The Human Brain Project (HPB) FET Flagship gathers a large multidisciplinary consortium of around 100 partner organisations and involves world leading experts. It includes experts in computer science including HPC, neurosciences, AI and robotics, micro-electronics, and also support in innovation and exploitation, ethics, education, and communication. The large core project is associated with a number smaller partnering projects contributing to the different science objectives. The built EBRAINS research infrastructure is expected to continue operation and development under Horizon Europe. FET Flagships are visionary, science-driven, large-scale research initiatives addressing grand Scientific and Technological (S&T) challenges, under the Future & Emerging Technologies (FET) programme of H2020. They are long-term initiatives bringing together excellent research teams across various disciplines, sharing a unifying goal and an ambitious research roadmap on how to achieve it. They bring together a large number of research organisations and establish a close link between related activities at European, national and regional levels, ensuring a mutual reinforcement. FET Flagships run for about 10 years, with a total budget of around 1 billion Euros (core plus partnering projects included). This bold investment cannot be carried out alone by the European Commission or any single Member State.The initiative has the following objectives:Thanks to knowledge management (including brain atlases), AI and brain modeling/simulation, a paradigm shift in the progress toward our understanding of how the human brain works and is affected by diseases. The goal is double:(1) to allow the development of new brain health approaches, including public health and personalised diagnosis and treatments; (2) to emulate its computational capabilities in new electronic processors (aka neuromorphic) and new AI and cognitive robotics approaches with better environment awareness and decision making capabilities.An ICT-based Research Infrastructure for neurosciences - "EBRAINS" - open to researchers in Europe and beyond, with rich data collections and brain models covering multiple levels of the brain functioning structures. The constituting IT tools allow (a) curation, referencing, archiving and use of neuroscience data under the FAIR principle, (b) reproduceable and collaborative analysis and simulation workflows including with virtual robotics, (c) scaffolds for brain model development including for robots or other autonomous systems, etc. The tools are based on a cloudified approach around HPC centers and neuromorphic platforms, and with also distributed competence and laboratory facilities across Europe.Development of Ethics and RRI approaches to accompany the above two objectives, including in collaboration with other large brain research initiatives in the world, under the umbrella of the International Brain Initiative (IBI).
