In August 2022, Katrin Amunts from Forschungszentrum Jülich and Alan Evans from McGill University in Canada presented AI applications in brain mapping to German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and a delegation of high-ranking industry representatives during their visit of the Institut québécois d'intelligence artificielle (Mila) in Montreal.
The successful collaboration between the research teams of Amunts add Evans is carried out under the funding umbrella of the Helmholtz International BigBrain Analystics & Learning Laboratory (HIBALL). In 2013, the neuroscientists jointly presented the BigBrain in the journal Science - a three-dimensional reconstruction of a single human brain with uniquely high resolution. HIBALL takes the successful collaboration to the next level by strengthening the use and joint development of the latest technologies in artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) for neuroscience.
In close partnership with the European Human Brain Project and the Canadian Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives programme, HIBALL is building new transatlantic computing platforms to share big data and workflows between Canada and Germany, enabling collaboration across national, structural and technical boundaries.
During the visit to Canada, the German Chancellor praised the great progress made, especially in AI, which is an important field both for Germany as a science location and for the future of the German economy.