Katrin Amunts is a full professor and director of the C. and O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf, and director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ). Since 2023, she is the Joint Chief Executive Officer of EBRAINS AISBL in Brussels, Belgium. 

• Developing a multi-level, multimodal atlas of the human brain
• Relationship between structure, function and behaviour
• Cytoarchitectonics using state-of-the-art methods of image analysis, statistics and deep learning
• The relationship between architectonics and genetics
• Intersubject variability

Katrin Amunts did postdoctoral fellowships at the Fraunhofer IKP in Berlin and at the C. & O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at Duesseldorf University, Germany. In 1999, she set up a new research unit for Brain Mapping at Forschungszentrum Juelich. From 2004 until 2013 she was a professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at the RWTH Aachen University. From 2016 to 2023 she was the Chair of the Scientific and Infrastructure Board (SIB) and Scientific Research Director of the European Flagship Human Brain Project (HBP). In 2023, she was the General Director of the Human Brain Project.

• 2023: Justine and Yves Sergent Award, Canada 
• 2022: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2022: Hector Science Award 2021
• 2015: Business Insider, "50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the World"
• 2014: MIT Technology Review: 10 Breakthrough Technologies, Brain Mapping

• Since 2024
  Member oft the Brain Prize selection committee, Lundbeck Foundation 
• Since 2024
  Coordinator of “EBRAINS 2.0: Data, Tools, Models for Neuroscience and Brain Research”, HORIZON Europe, European Union (EU)
• Since 2023
  Member of the Leopoldina German National Academy of Science
• Since 2022
  Hector Fellow, Hector Fellow Academy
• Since 2018
  Member of the International Advisory Council Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives, Canada
• Since 2017
  Member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts
• Since 2017
  Co-speaker of the Max Planck School of Cognition
• Since 2016
  Member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech)
• 2012-2020
  Member of the German Ethics Council

“I want to understand how the structure of our brain relates to how we think, feel and develop as human beings. I would also like to help people with brain disorders. The atlas is a tool that helps us gain in-depth insights about the human brain, and a good atlas is absolutely necessary to better understand disease processes and develop new therapies.

Very early in my career, I realized how changes in brain structure are related to dysfunction. A comprehensive understanding of how the brain is structured is needed – not just on one but on multiple levels. The cellular architecture serves as an interface that almost all other factors can be related to. That’s why we started mapping it in the 1990s.”

“Brain mapping has a hundred-year tradition, and we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yet, our concept of an atlas is fundamentally new: From the very beginning, we have included inter-subject variation in the atlas. In addition, we are not just trying to divide the brain into small packages (areas), but we are also looking at other organizational principles like the molecular features and connectivity, which are superimposed on this division and play a major role in brain function. This is central to really understanding the brain. It is also not enough to simply zoom into the brain with ever better optics – you always have to keep the whole brain in mind and put local features into the whole-brain perspective.

We want to understand how the brain functions as an organ and not just as a small network of cells, and this makes our approach different from many others.”

“Our next goal is to advance to the one-micrometre scale at the whole-brain level - we have already reconstructed the first regions of interest at this resolution. This will enable us to better understand principles of network organization and function. Such insights are very important to address diseases that are caused by the disruption of networks, such as stroke, and may guide the future design of artificial neuronal networks.

Another major research goal in the years to come is to understand the relationship between brain areas and plasticity that occur on a cellular and molecular level.”

 – In English –

• El País – Katrin Amunts, neuroscientist: ‘Our brains are different from each other at all levels’
• NZZ – A decade after its founding, the Human Brain Project has taken brain research to a new level
• France24 – Inside the human brain
• BBC – International women in science: Five great scientists working today
• Bloomberg – The Next Computer Revolution Will Be Based on Our Brains
• newstalk – Building a Brain
• Business Insider – 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world
• Proclinical – Top 10 women in life sciences today
• DW – A Portrait of Brain Researcher Katrin Amunts
• Nature – How the world’s biggest brain maps could transform neuroscience
• New York Times – 3-D Map of Human Brain Gives Unprecedented Detail
• The Guardian – Mapping the brain: 3D atlas aims to unlock the secrets of the mind

– In German –

• FAZ – Wo bitte steckt hier der Geist? Interview mit Katrin Amunts
• 3sat Nano: Zehn Jahre Human Brain Project
• Sueddeutsche Zeitung/Tagesanzeiger – Human Brain Project Zehn Jahre haben Forschende das Hirn untersucht – was sind die Erfolge?
• ZDF heute – Digitale Gehirnforschung: Mit dem Hirnatlas gegen Parkinson und Co.
• Süddeutsche Zeitung – Werden wir das Gehirn jemals verstehen?
• Bild der Wissenschaft – Ein Atlas des menschlichen Gehirns
• ZDF – MaiBrain: Reise ins Gehirn - Sinne und Bewusstsein
• Süddeutsche Zeitung – Künstliche Intelligenz: Größer, besser - aber auch schlauer?
• RiffReporter – „Es regnet nicht im Computer“ – wo sich Gehirn und Software unterscheiden
• DER SPIEGEL – Die Karte unseres Selbst
• Interview Hertie-Stiftung – Wie sieht die Hirnforschung der Zukunft aus?
• GEO – Interview mit Katrin Amunts
• Spektrum.de – "Wir hätten nicht geglaubt, dass das machbar ist"
• Das Parlament. Zeitung des Deutschen Bundestags – »Ein Projekt der Hoffnung«
• Laborjournal – „Ein Modell allein kann das Gehirn nicht erklären“
• Die Welt – Der Plan von der Vermessung des Hirns
• Aerzteblatt – Zwischen Medizin und Big Data
• Deutsche Welle – Portrait Hirnforscherin Katrin Amunts

– Other languages –

• Ca m’Interesse – "Un Google Maps du cerveau" : ce projet a reproduit le cerveau humain sur ordinateur
• Tygodnik Powszechny – Google Maps dla mózgu

• Katrin Amunts – A modern take on human brain anatomy
• Building a Brain. Interview with Katrin Amunts

• Science – Brain research challenges supercomputing
• Futur – The brain as a model
• The Conversation – The Human Brain Project: six achievements of Europe’s largest neuroscience programme
• Nature Human Behaviour – Big-data studies need to be part of policy discussion
• Physiology News Magazine – The Human Brain Project – Building the basis for collaborative brain science