The second General Assembly of MINIGRAPH, an EIC Pathfinder project,  took place this week at the Campus of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2)  is located.

With the attendance of 22 members of the MINIGRAPH consortium, which also includes the start-up INBRAIN Neuroelectronics, the research and innovation center IMEC, Fraunhofer IZM, the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab (MSRL, ETH-Zurich), the start-up Nanoflex Robotics AG, and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the gathering allowed the team to share latest progress for each work package as well as updated plans for the different tasks. The news couldn’t be better since all work is advancing at the desired pace, and the next semester ahead is likely to bring MINIGRAPH very close to the first outcomes.

This meeting also marked the launch of a series of activities to discuss ethical concerns around the neural technologies developed in MINIGRAPH. On this occasion, Hanna Maslen, Deputy Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and ethics advisor of this project, led a workshop with participation of all attendants to discuss the ethical concerns around brain computer interfaces and brain neuromodulation therapies. Questions about animal testing and human trials and their ethical implications were also raised.

The next meeting will be hosted by Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin in September 2023.