Workshop featured competition for young researchers to solve neuroscience problems

On 21 July, the proceedings of the BrainComp workshop on brain-inspired computing were published by Springer LNCS. BrainComp is a workshop series that brings together brain researchers and computer scientists to drive innovation, and to enable new insights into the brain and the basis of biological information processing.

Brain-Inspired Computing

The new open access book comprises papers from the 4th International Workshop on Brain-Inspired Computing, held in Cetraro, Italy, in July 2019. Shedding light on the digital transformation of neuroscience by High-Performance Computing (HPC), the eleven papers in this volume present research on:

• Brain atlasing
• Multi-scale models and simulation
• Computing and data infrastructures for neuroscience
• Artificial and natural neural architectures

The BrainComp workshop was jointly organized by the Human Brain Project, the University of Calabria, the University of Groningen, and the Research Centre Juelich.

Young researchers’ competition

This edition marked the inclusion of the first BrainComp young researchers’ competition, which invited young researchers to solve neuroscience problems - from feasibility studies to complex workflows and computationally intensive tasks such as simulations, large modeling projects or data analytics - by using HPC resources that were provided by leading European HPC centers.

The winner of the competition, Alberto Antonietti from Politecnico di Milano and University of Pavia, Italy, exploited the HPC resources to investigate the underlying mechanisms of cerebellar Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation affecting specific task behavior.

The editors of the conference proceedings, as well as the organizers of the workshop, are very pleased with the inclusion of the young researchers’ competition. Thomas Lippert, Head of Computing Services at the Human Brain Project (HBP), welcomes the opportunity to approach young European scientists: “It is great to see young scientists solving complex problems using HPC and at the same time having the opportunity to present and discuss them with an interdisciplinary group of participants. This exchange has been a huge benefit for all participants of the workshop, which offered many networking opportunities." Katrin Amunts, scientific Director of the Human Brain Project, highlighted the commitment of the participating HPC centers, namely the CSC - IT Center for Science in Finland, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS and the Juelich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, which also collaborate in Fenix.

Further information

The next BrainComp workshop is planned for Summer 2022.

Volume editors:

Katrin Amunts, Research Centre Jülich & C.&O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Germany
Lucio Grandinetti, University of Calabria, Italy
Thomas Lippert, Research Centre Jülich & Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany
Nicolai Petkov, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Link to BrainComp open access book: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030824266