Brainspiration 2024: Exploring Interdisciplinary Insights and Uniting People for Future Proof Computing

Brainspiration 2024 kicked off with a pre-conference reception on Tuesday evening at the Forum Groningen (Groningen, The Netherlands), welcoming speakers and attendees from across disciplines. Over two days, scientists gathered to explore brain-inspired concepts, systems and materials for information processing. With 13 talks, 12 poster presentations and 100 guests, the event fostered robust discussions and collaborative opportunities.

During the lunch breaks, both days featured poster presentations, offering attendees a chance to engage more intimately with emerging research. Presenters came from different institutions within the Netherlands and abroad and brought insightful topics to light, ranging from Percolating nanoparticle networks for neuromorphic computing to Integrated, ultrafast all-optical polariton transistors. The posters were highly popular and got a lot of well-deserved attention from the conference goers.

«It was a pleasure to attend Brainspiration 2024 with absolutely all the latest and exciting results on neuromorphic computing and cognitive materials science, organised by the CogniGron centre.»

– Lambert Schomaker.

There were experts from New Zealand, the United States, Europe, including the Dutch community, in the emergent field of brain-inspired computing. They discussed learning with physical networks, evaluating physical unconventional computers and exploring the computational advantage of neuromorphic computing for solving scientific problems. There were also talks on brain-like dynamics of light, on quantum reservoir computing, and on leveraging the richness of materials physics for efficient information technologies, but attention was also on the applications of neuromorphic engineering, the DeepSouth supercomputer, and event-driven neuromorphic solutions for efficient dynamic signal processing.

The conference ended with a talk by Herbert Jaeger, co-discoverer of reservoir computing and CogniGron professor, with the provocative title: Will it take another 2300 years until we really know what ‘computing’ means?

As the conference concluded, it became clear that the event had successfully fostered an additional step towards understanding each other's fields of expertises and creating new interdisciplinary connections. With new connections forming, and fresh perspectives shared, Brainspiration 2024 demonstrated the importance of bringing people from different disciplines together to work collectively towards a common mission: rethinking (brain-inspired) computing.

Plans for next year's event are already underway, promising even more opportunities. Brainspiration 2025 will be organised by Radboud University in Nijmegen, and we look forward to next year’s edition!

A big thank you to all speakers, poster presenters, participants, who travelled from near and afar, and of course the organising team!

And to our partners: NL-ECO, Hybrain, University of Groningen and Ubbo Emmius Foundation.