On November 6th, the STE section of the Swiss Embassy hosted a public lecture on the Human Brain Project (HBP) by Dr. Sean Hill. He is professor at the Brain Mind Institute of EPFL and one of the principal investigators in the Human Brain Project.

The HBP is one of the largest and most ambitious research projects of our time and it tackles one of the great scientific challenges: understanding the human brain. It has just started and over the next 10 years it will integrate all existing knowledge and data about the human brain to create a computer simulation of the human brain. In the long term HBP hopes this simulation can be used not only for engineering purposes, but to understand and treat human diseases that have their cause in the brain.

HBP is a flagship project of the European Commission. It involves over 80 institutions worldwide and has funding of 1.19 billion Euro (RMB 9.7 billion).

Swiss institutions play an important role in the project. Chief among them is the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where the project is directed.

The lecture attracted about 80 guests, many of them alumni of Swiss universities. At a reception after the speech the guests benefitted from the opportunity to exchange and to ask questions and discuss with Dr. Sean Hill.