Final conference and Shared European Brain Research Area Research Agenda (SEBRA) consultation

The EBRA project partners are delighted to invite you to Save the Date for the upcoming EBRA Final Conference, which will take place on 11 October 2022 in Brussels, Belgium.

The European Brain Research Area was launched on 1 November 2018, designed to respond to the Horizon 2020 call SC1-HCO-10-2018, entitled ‘Coordinating European brain research and developing global initiatives’, with a consortium consisting of some of the main players in the field of brain advocacy and research: the European Brain Council (EBC), the Network of European funding for Neuroscience research (NEURON), the Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) and the Human Brain Project (HBP).

Four years have already passed and plenty of work is to be presented this coming October, including the EBRA Landscape Analysis, the Shared European Brain Research Agenda (SEBRA) as well as the work undertaken by the six EBRA Clusters. The event will be an occasion to bring the wider brain research community and key players together, to discuss key aims of the project: the current state of brain research in Europe, increased patient engagement and public awareness, research infrastructures and data sharing and the future potentials and need for a brain health partnership going forward.

Collaboration and cooperation in the brain research area remains more important than ever and the EBRA Final Conference will be a major milestone to ensure unification and commitment to the future of brain research in Europe.

More details will follow soon – keep following EBRA here and on our social media channels for the latest information on the conference, including venue announcements, programme content, registration, and for upcoming project outcomes, including the launch of the Shared European Brain Research Agenda (SEBRA) Open Consultation later this week.

The development of the Shared European Brain Research Agenda was launched in December 2019 and is currently underway within the EBRA project, with the aim to provide recommendations on future areas for excellent, innovative and translational research.

The process began by analysing existing agendas as well as the overlapping fields, which was shared with 90 experts in the brain research area. In the context of two surveys (one in March 2020 and another in July 2020), these experts were asked to contribute their five most important priorities, gaps and enabling actions and to rank them in order of priority. In November 2020, those were further examined and dissected by the involved experts.

With today’s Open Consultation launch, EBRA calls to receive input and gather the perspectives from the brain research community as a whole — may it be scientists, patients, caregivers, associations, industry, neurologists, psychiatrists, regulators, decision makers, politicians, funders, etc. — at the national, EU and global level.

Community response will provide direct feedback on the final content of SEBRA and ensure that all community perspectives are properly included in the document. Feedback will be analysed and fed into a section of the final document, which will be presented to the European Commission to highlight and attest the need for a brain health partnership.

As much feedback as possible is incredibly important for SEBRA and we encourage you to please complete –and share in your network – the consultation before 30 April 2022.