Jochen Triesch (Senior Fellow and board member of FIAS) is coordinator of the new priority program "Computational Connectomics". It is one of 17 SPPs established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the year 2017.

The still young field of Connectomics deals with the creation and investigation of detailed maps showing the connections within a nervous system in an organism to an unprecedented degree and with unprecedented precision.  

The Computational Connectomics (SPP) program, headed by Prof. Dr. Jochen Triesch, aims to strengthen this new field from the mathematical side. The focus is on the development of calculation models and theories in order to be able to describe and explain the measured data. How do the connections in the brain work exactly? Which nerve cells and brain areas talk to each other?  Other focal points are the development of automated analysis techniques that facilitate the collection of such data, as well as the management and exchange of data.

In addition to Jochen Triesch, Moritz Helmstaedter (MPI for brain research, Frankfurt), Claus C. Hilgetag (University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf), Heiko J. Luhmann (Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz) and Petra Ritter (BFNL Condition Dependency of Learning, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin) were also involved in the application process.

The SPP is one of 17 new DFG priority programmes that will be launched in 2017. They were selected from a total of 76 initiatives previously submitted to the DFG. They are intended to examine the scientific fundamentals of particularly current or emerging research areas. A total of around 108 million euros will be available for the new programmes in an initial funding period over the next three years. 

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