Blue Brain and the Human Brain Project

Blue Brain and the Human Brain Project

The central vision for the Human Brain Project (HBP) - reconstructing and simulating the human brain - was developed by Henry Markram, based on the research strategy developed in the Blue Brain Project. 

Starting in 2010, Markram created and coordinated the consortium of 80 European and International partners that developed the original HBP project proposal. In January 2013, after multiple rounds of peer review, the project was selected as one of two FET Flagships, to be funded with 1 billion euro over 10 years. The project began operations in October of the same year. The project currently includes 112 partners.

In forming the Human Brain Project consortium, Markram invited two other novel research areas to join the project: medical informatics, led by Richard Frackowiak, and neuromorphic computing led by Karlheinz Meier. Other key partners were also invited to contribute to the project's three core research areas, which were subsequently labelled as Future Neuroscience, Future Medicine and Future Computing. 

The goal of the Human Brain Project is to use "ICT as a catalyst for a global collaborative effort to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities". In the current ramp-up phase, the Blue Brain team preserves the original vision of reconstructing and simulating the brain, focusing on Neuroinformatics, Brain Simulation, High Performance Computing, and Neurorobotics.