Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


NSF Issues Awards to Advance a National Research Infrastructure for Neuroscience

August 7th, 2017 / in Announcements, NSF, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

NSF logoThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has made 17 Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience (NeuroNex) awards to aid the research community as it pursues one of its grandest challenges: understanding the brain.

These projects will support the development of innovative, accessible and shared capabilities and resources, as well as theoretical frameworks and computational modeling to advance neuroscience research. The overall goal of this activity is to establish a coherent national infrastructure to enhance our understanding of brain function across organizational levels and a diversity of species.

NeuroNex is one element of Understanding the Brain, NSF’s multi-year effort to enable a scientific understanding of the full complexity of the brain. Nine of the new awards are for NeuroNex Neurotechnology Hubs, which will focus on the development, refinement, and dissemination of innovative neurotechnologies.

Some of the award titles, principal investigators, and sponsor institutions are listed below.

NeuroNex Neurotechnology Hub awards:

NeuroNex Innovation awards:

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has also been working in this space for many years including co-sponsoring a brain science and computer science workshop with NSF in late 2014, called Research Interfaces between Brain Science and Computer Science. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together computer scientists and brain scientists to articulate new research opportunities and “brain”-storm grand challenges. Over 70 computer scientists and neuroscientists from academia, industry, and government were in attendance and between 160-300 participants viewed each panel and plenary on the live-stream. You can see all the videos and slides from the workshop here. The workshop report suggests that the study of computing and the study of the brain interrelate in three ways, each suggesting a major research direction.

  • First, the experimental study of brain architecture and function is a massive-data problem. Making progress necessitates advances in computing and the realization of new computational tools.
  • Second, the study of efficient algorithms and the design of intelligent autonomous systems should provide new ideas and inspiration concerning brain architecture and function.
  • Finally, the remarkable efficiency (including energy efficiency) of the brain, once understood, may inspire radically new algorithmic or system organization approaches that could transform computing itself.

Learn more about the 17 Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience (NeuroNex) awards here

NSF Issues Awards to Advance a National Research Infrastructure for Neuroscience