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Shaping Europe’s digital future
News article | Foilseachán

Graphene and Human Brain Project exhibit at Tallinn Digital Summit 2017

The European Commission's Future and Emerging Technology Flagships Graphene and the Human Brain Project will showcase their latest remarkable achievements at the Tallinn Digital Summit 2017.

Graphene and the Human Brain project are funded via the Future and Emerging technologies programme. They will be presenting their latest results a the European Commission's stand at Tallinn Digital Summit 2017.

In particular, Graphene will present several successful initiatives from across Europe. The Human Brain Project, instead, will showcase three thematic streams:

  1. From nerve fibers to a digital 3D brain atlas for researchers and clinicians
  2. Neuromorphic Computing: Computers like Brains 
  3. Neurorobotics: A strategic pillar of the Human Brain Project

Graphene

What is Graphene Flagship?

Graphene Flagship is a new form of joint, coordinated research funded by the Future and EmergingTechnologies (FET) programme over a period of ten years (2013-2023). It is one of Europe's biggest ever research initiatives, with a budget of a EUR 1 billion. The Graphene Flagship consortium brings together more than 150 academic and industrial research groups in 23 countries. 

What is the goal of the project?

Graphene Flagship aims to take graphene and other related materials from the academic laboratories to the market, while stimulating economic growth and creating jobs.

What is Graphene?

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms. This  2D material has extraordinary physical and technical properties: it is the thinnest material, it conducts electricity better than silicon, it is stronger than steel and has unique optical properties.

The Graphene Flagship's research effort covers the entire value chain, from materials production to components and system integration. The area applications are span from flexible electronics, and printed electronics, to 5G mobile technologies, batteries, aerospace, medical applications, filtration and automotive.

Some remarkable breakthroughs

  • The first fully functional microprocessor made from graphene-like materials: this is a first step toward ultra-thin, flexible devices and holds promise for integrating computational power into everyday surfaces and objects.
  • Graphene-based neural probes: used to examine brain activity in high resolution, theycan help to better understand diseases such as epilepsy and disorders that affect brain function and motor control; another application is to improve neuroprosthetics by enabling control of artificial limbs.
  • Large-area Perovskite-based solar cells for producing electrical power with high efficiency due to enhanced lifetime and performance of large scale areas
  • Ultrahigh sensitivity graphene infrared detectors for measuring temperature with strong accuracy, which is key for applications in security screening (e.g., looking for hazardous substances).

Human Brain Project

What is the Human Brain Project Flagship?

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is one of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagships of the European Commission. Launched in 2013 and funded with a budget of EUR 1 billion over a period of ten years, the Human Brain Project brings together more than 400 researchers from 24 countries.

What is the goal of the project?

The main scientific goal of HBP is to understand "how the brain works" and "what and how it does not work in the diseased brain". HBP also aims to provide researchers worldwide with a large ICT research infrastructure accessible via an unique open portal. This access point will allow the researchers to work together sharing their data, using the same ICT tools and mathematical models and analysing large sets of brain data with the common goal of better understanding the brain and its diseases.

Some remarkable breakthroughs of Human Brain Project Flagship

  • The HBP can revolutionise the future of neuroscience, medicine, and computing. An important milestone was the first release of the HBP's six ICT Platforms, providing a wide range of collaborative tools to the research community in Europe and beyond.
  • The HBP brain simulation platform proved to be an invaluable tool for turning mathematical principles, theory and data into new insights. Following the first computer reconstruction of a fragment of a rat neocortex (published in 2015), simulation is now applied to other areas of the brain.
  • Neuroscientists are also using two advanced prototypes of interactive supercomputing, JULIA and JURON, developed in HBP for simulating large brains models. In addition, computing technologies mimicking the learning properties of neurons have been developed in two world leading"neuromorphic" systems providing new cognitive capabilities to future artificial intelligence systems.
  • The HBP neuro-informatic platform hosts multi-level and multi-scale brain image data from rodents to humans providing detail of the brain complex organization. First prototypes of these web-based HBP Atlases are accessible, serving as a powerful new research tool for the neuroscience, medical and neuro-surgery community from all over the world.
  • HBP cognitive neuroscientists are contributing to the design of a neuro-robotic platform to perform experiments that are very complex - or even impossible- in the real world (for example study learning effects over many years or introduce lesions into the brain and study the impact they have);
  • In the area of brain medicine, the medical informatics platform provides distributed analyses of electronic health records and brain data allowing the identification of new subtypes of dementia and first biological signatures for future development of personalised medicine.