The Human Brain: from Cells to Society

The European Science Foundation (ESF) strategic initiative “The Human Brain: from Cells to Society” aims to enable Europe’s scientific community, in interaction with policy makers, to develop medium to long-term views and an analysis of future research developments with the aim of defining research agendas at national and European level.

As with all our strategic activities, the ESF considers this topic timely to the advancement of science and of high-priority interest to the disciplines involved. The latter is illustrated by the fact that, independently, all five ESF Standing Committees decided to support the initiative: the Standing Committee for the Humanities, the Standing Committee for the Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Standing Committee for the Physical and Engineering Sciences, the Standing Committee for the Social Sciences and the European Medical Research Councils.

As a first step, a closed meeting taking place on 14-15 December 2011 at the Harnack-Haus, Berlin, marks the scoping phase of this initiative, aimed at identifying the (emerging) research areas/themes under the initiative’s broad umbrella that promise to benefit most from a further look.  The meeting is convened around six key questions, each of which will be addressed by the carefully selected discussion group composed of twenty participants who are invited solely on the basis of their international scientific reputation. Please note that the meeting will not feature presentations in the usual sense. Instead, all participants are invited to contribute to the concentrated discussions – prepared in advance by the session chair and sparked off by some stimulating introductory remarks from the designated discussant.

As can be seen in the schedule, the topics of the various sessions are very broad, spanning issues like “inter-disciplinarity” or “neuroscience and future technologies”. This has been done on purpose. Rather than the Steering Committee deciding what focus the strategic initiative should take, the current scoping workshop aims – in a truly bottom-up fashion - to collect the input from the appropriate scientific experts to identify this focus. Therefore, the session’s themes are meant to be inclusive, allowing the participants to bring in those topics they deem important.

The outcome of the meeting will be a science policy publication that will serve as a scientific validation for the interest in the specific topics/areas identified. To this end, a science writer will participate in the meeting who will synthesize the six discussions. This will be the basis for the resulting publication, further fine-tuned by the Steering Committee. The next step will be a more in-depth look – either on the part of ESF or other stakeholders - on those selected topics which should result in focussed science policy recommendations.

Schedule for download

List of participants for download

Please note that participation at the workshop in Berlin is by invitation only.