On January 28, 2013, thousands of scientists all over the world held their breath. The European Community was about to announce which among 26 competing research projects would win 1 billion Euros for a period of 10 years. That evening, the two winners were announced: Graphene (led by Swedish universities) and the Swiss-based Human Brain Project (HBP). Both these European "flagship projects" involve hundreds of laboratories and thousands of scientists, students, and technicians. The two winning projects promise to bring about a revolution in nanomaterials (Graphene) and in understanding the brain (HBP).
The fundamental idea upon which the HBP is based was conceived about 10 years earlier, in the brain of Prof. Henry Markram and his colleagues in a project called the "Blue Brain Project" (BBP) . The idea was twofold: (i) That understanding the brain requires a systematic approach to collect and database all available information about the brain, like the different cell types (like different types of trees in the forest), the different pattern of electrical activities composed of elementary signals, "the spikes," that nerve cells generate, and the connections that neurons form among themselves (synapses) to create functioning brain circuits.

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