EBRAINS welcomes Centre national de la recherche scientifique as new associate member

In the early years of the 21st century, neuroscience faced the challenges of generating and exploiting big data and developing in silico approaches. This was requiring a paradigmatic shift in methodological approaches. A major opportunity to realise this evolution was offered by the 10-year FET Human Brain Project (HBP) flagship launched in 2013. This initiative has fostered synergies between a wide range of fields, including neuroscience, computer science, neuromorphic hardware technologies, clinical medicine, etc. 

The CNRS, through its researchers, has been an important partner in HBP. We are entering the post-HBP period, whose legacy consists of a distributed digital research infrastructure: EBRAINS. The Research Infrastructure is organized around a central hub that coordinates a pan-European network of services delivered by national nodes. EBRAINS has been recognized by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) by being included in its 2021 Roadmap, making it an EU priority. CNRS is as much involved in EBRAINS as it was in HBP.

The membership went into effect on 1 March 2023. CNRS aims at becoming a major contributor to the French National Node of EBRAINS research infrastructure, EBRAINS-France. In fact, EBRAINS-France has the ambition to provide platforms for data analysis and modeling, and to give access to analysis and calculation means to a very large scientific community of neuroscientists, physicians, specialists in information sciences and brain-machine interfaces. It aims to provide support for the development of major neuroscience projects to respond to major health issues, all in close partnership with the central coordination of EBRAINS Central Hub and the other European national nodes.

CNRS is the largest basic research organization in Europe carrying out research in all fields of knowledge, through its ten nationwide Divisions as the lnstitute for Biological Sciences (INSB). CNRS (INSB) employs more than 1000 tenured researchers, engineers, and support staff in research in the fields of Neuroscience and Cognition.

About EBRAINS

EBRAINS is a new digital research infrastructure (RI), created by the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP), to foster brain-related research and to help translate the latest scientific discoveries into innovation in medicine and industry, for the benefit of patients and society.

It draws on cutting-edge neuroscience and offers an extensive range of brain data sets, atlases, modelling and simulation tools, easy access to high-performance computing resources and to robotics and neuromorphic platforms.

All academic researchers have open access to EBRAINS’ state-of-the art services. Industry researchers are also very welcome to use the platform under specific agreements. For more information about EBRAINS, please contact us at info@ebrains.eu or visit https://ebrains.eu/

EBRAINS is listed on the ESFRI roadmap

About the Human Brain Project

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is the largest brain science project in Europe and stands among the biggest research projects ever funded by the European Union. It is one of the three FET Flagship Projects of the EU. At the interface of neuroscience and information technology, the HBP investigates the brain and its diseases with the help of highly advanced methods from computing, neuroinformatics and artificial intelligence and drives innovation in fields like brain-inspired computing and neurorobotics.

Media Contact

communications@ebrains.eu