Pieter Roelfsema receives NWO grant for the development of brain implants

Professor Pieter Roelfsema receives a grant of €14.3 million from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for the development of brain implants. It is one of the five projects that have been awarded funding from the NWO Crossover program.

Pieter Roelfsema is director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and is affiliated with Amsterdam Neuroscience through his appointment as strategy professor in the department of Integrative Neurophysiology and a member of the Systems & Network Neuroscience research program.

INTENSE project

The INTENSE (Innovative NeuroTEchNology for SociEty) project of the NeuroTech-NL consortium with Pieter Roelfsema as head will develop brain implants to improve the lives of people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed, or who have epilepsy. The research combines the greatly increased knowledge about our brains with new possibilities within neurotechnology. With this, the researchers want to come up with new solutions and activities.

Crossover program

The Crossover program is new within NWO and is part of the NWO contribution to the Knowledge and Innovation Contract 2018-2019. With this contract, government, industry and knowledge institutions subscribe to the research ambitions for the top sectors with the aim of strengthening the Dutch knowledge and innovation system. Compared with “regular” public-private partnerships, the projects in the Crossover program cover a broader range of top sectors and other research agendas.