ABSTRACT
In January, 2013, the ‘Human Brain Project’ (HBP), led by a team at EPF Lausanne and University of Heidelberg got the green light: it had been allocated 1.19 billion Euros over 10 years. 1 This was big science; new style EU science funding. It transpired earlier that the core group of successful scientists had had available close to 5 million Euros for preparing this bid through media work; organising a web presence, events and meetings; and anticipating controversy before any research work had even started. The vision of modelling the human brain with computers is controversial. But considering the funding pot, seed-funding was about 0.4% of the overall budget, which on 1.19 billion Euros makes a sizable start. What is happening here? How shall we make sense of this increasingly normal event in scientific culture? This episode of early 2013 illustrates what this chapter conceptualises: how researchers, materials and symbols align into techno-scientific projects and face up to challenges.
