Michael Hawrylycz
The BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network: Comprehensive multimodal atlases of the human brain
The BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) is a collaborative effort between neuroscientists, computational biologists and software engineers to create a comprehensive atlas of the human brain. Supported by the U.S. BRAIN Initiative, the project is dedicated to advancing our knowledge of the brain by gathering and sharing new data that allows identifying a “parts list” of the brain, detailing its vast array of neurons and non-neuronal cells. The BICAN continues the work of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network consortium which recently delivered a whole mouse brain transcriptomic atlas. In this Educational Lecture I will survey the open-access compendium of BICCN/BICAN data and tools that are available to help researchers better understand the structure and function of the brain and advance neuroscience research.
Dr Michael Hawrylycz is an Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science where he has led the informatics and data annotation efforts of many of the basic Allen Brain atlases since the foundation of the Institute. He is the Director of the Modeling, Analysis, and Theory Group and is responsible for informatics, modeling and data analysis strategies for the Institute’s next generation projects. He is an active investigator of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) consortium which seeks to develop multimodal atlases of the human and non-human primate brains. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in applied mathematics, Dr Hawrylycz’s work interests span a variety of areas, including computer science, image processing, and computational biology and genomics.
Dr Michael Hawrylycz will deliver the BigBrain Project Educational Lecture at the HBHL Training Day.
