Carboncopies Research¶
Advancing the science and technology of whole brain emulation through multiple interconnected research initiatives. Each project is open for collaboration.
Brain Emulation Challenge¶
Flagship Initiative
About: The Brain Emulation Challenge will rapidly accelerate progress towards WBE through a series of challenges and prizes designed to focus, quantify, and grow the structure-to-function field. Through rigorous validation metrics and performance scores, we can determine what methods work best and provide debugging feedback where they go wrong.
Impact: Conversion of brain data to working emulations (operational models that satisfy WBE criteria) is almost non-existent. This 'Translation' from data to model parameters is the final step to end-to-end examples of brain emulation. End-to-end examples will cause explosive growth in the field, as more people see the real and immense potential of the technology. Unfortunately, Translation is very hard, because evaluating how well a Translation method works is very difficult without a known correct result, i.e. without fully known ground-truth.
Therefore, we propose the WBE challenge, directly addressing these issues. Challenge data sets with fully understood images (e.g. ImageNet) were critical to the rapid development of computer vision. Our generated virtual brain samples containing a fully understood functional neuronal network allow us to apply validation metrics based on rigorous success criteria. With that, we can score the performance of an attempted translation from virtual brain data to a running emulation, and provide precise feedback about errors made.
Our challenge will encourage friendly standardized academic competition within the field, driving innovation by setting clearly defined goals and rewards. With each iteration of the challenge, we create more-realistic and complex datasets that build participants up to the real-deal. This step-wise approach would allow participants to systematically debug and improve their methods, further accelerating their development.
Active Platforms¶
Software infrastructure you can use and contribute to today.
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BrainGenix Platform
The comprehensive software platform behind our research. BrainGenix provides simulation, virtual brain data acquisition, and analysis tools that power the Brain Emulation Challenge and broader WBE research. No comparable platform for WBE exists anywhere else. Our platform focuses on being fast and reliable, removing the need for researchers to worry about making code scale.
Research Programs¶
Ongoing collaborative scholarship advancing the theoretical and ethical foundations of WBE.
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Ethics Framework
Structured principles ensuring WBE development aligns with human dignity, scientific integrity, and global justice. The framework addresses foundational questions about consciousness, subjective experience, and personal identity that are essential to responsible WBE development. Developed in partnership with our Consciousness & Subjective Experience journal club.
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WBE Roadmap
A collaborative update to the forward-looking roadmap first published in 2008 by the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. Our group partners with experts across US and European universities, publishing pre-print sections for public comment.
Research Paper Index¶
Our curated Zotero library covers key research papers spanning neuroscience, connectomics, computational modeling, philosophy of mind, and ethics.