One-Billion Euro Grants for EU Brain Simulation and Graphene Research

News got out about the result of the highly anticipated decision of which research projects will receive a massive research grant from the European Commission, as reported in Nature News today.

The official press conference announcing the results will be on January 28, when the European Commission's Vice-President Neelie Kroes will introduce the two research projects chosen as winners of the FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) Flagships initiative. They will benefit from up to one billion euros ($1.34 billion) of EU funding each. These two initiatives were chosen from a shortlist of six, following a two-year, high-profile contest, by a panel of experts including leading scientists, professors, Nobel prize winners, and industrialists.

The first project is apparently the Human Brain Project, led by neuroscientist Henry Markram at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, which aims to simulate the human brain in a supercomputer, in order to aid medical advancement in brain disorders.

The second, called Graphene Project, is led by theoretical physicist Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. It's goal is to develop the awesome potential of graphene - an ultrathin, flexible and conducting form of carbon - along with related materials for applications in computing, batteries and sensors, which in turn could lead to great economic benefits for the European (and world) society.

The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship competition was launched in 2009 as "a challenge to apply information and communication technologies to social problems. FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society."

The six flagship projects are:

• FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: ICT can analyse vast amounts of data and complex situations so as to better predict natural disasters, or manage and respond to man-made disasters that cross national borders or continents.

• Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond: Graphene is a new substance developed by atomic and molecular scale manipulation that could replace silicon as the wonder material of the 21st century.

• Guardian Angels for a Smarter Life: tiny devices without batteries that act like autonomous personal assistants, and which can sense, compute and communicate potentially even while travelling through your bloodstream.

• The Human Brain Project: understanding the way in which the human brain works can bring the benefits of brain-related or brain-inspired developments to computing architectures, neuroscience and medicine.

• IT Future of Medicine: digital technology has the power to deliver individualised medicine, based on molecular, physiological and anatomical data collected from individual patients and processed on the basis of globally integrated medical knowledge.

• Robot Companions for Citizens: soft skinned and intelligent robots have highl