IRB Barcelona joins the digital research infrastructure EBRAINS as new associate member

The membership will give IRB Barcelona the opportunity to co-design future iterations of EBRAINS’ cutting-edge tools and services. These state-of-the-art capabilities – which cover data sharing, atlasing, modelling, simulation, high-performance computing, and neurorobotics – aim to help European researchers to address major challenges in brain health, benefiting from insights into data science, brain organization, and artificial intelligence gathered from the EU Flagship Human Brain Project.

The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to offer pioneering solutions to unresolved medical needs in cancer and other diseases related to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 employees and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).

"EBRAINS opens a window of opportunity to continue our research on the development of tools oriented towards the molecular study of the human brain. EBRAINS is not only a legacy of the EU Human Brain Flagship, but an effort to facilitate the multi-resolution study of our most fascinating organ", says Dr. Modesto Orozco, Head of the Molecular Modelling and Bioinformatics lab at IRB Barcelona.

"We are delighted to welcome IRB Barcelona as an associate member at EBRAINS. The institute is devoted to research on diseases linked to aging, including Alzheimer's. This membership will allow us to continue the collaboration which was established in the Human Brain Project", states Paweł Świeboda, CEO of EBRAINS.

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.