Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski

Research Interest

The main focus is to use modeling and simulations to understand the neural mechanisms underlying information processing and learning in the brain. Levels of investigation range over multiple biological scales, from large-scale simulations of cellular level neural networks down to kinetic models (i.e. systems biology approaches) of molecular and cellular processes. For most of the projects, interdisciplinary collaborations with experimental labs nationally and internationally are, and have been, crucial.

I have a long experience in training cross-disciplinary students/postdocs in addition to collaborating with experimentalists. Currently, I have a research group with doctoral students and postdocs/senior researchers divided between CST/EECS at KTH and Dept Neurosci at Karolinska Institutet (KI). Most of the group members are linked to Scilifelab. I’m also working closely with the International Neuroinformatics Coordination Facility, promoting FAIR principles within the neuroscience field.

Presently I’m also coordinating the building up of EBRAINS-Sweden. EBRAINS is the infrastructure for brain research resulting from the EU flagship, the Human Brain Project (HBP). It entered the Esfrii roadmap 2021. I’m also one of the PIs of the collaborative projects within SeRC as well as Digital Futures frameworks.

We have constructed tools for predicting connectivity in brain microcircuits and curate the corresponding cellular level data (e.g. Hjorth et al 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-021-09531-w). When building such models we need transcriptomics data and we have e.g. used the data collected at Scilifelab (e.g. Linnarsson). Also we construct tools/software and workflows for systems biology models (which are important to e.g. understand plasticity in the brain; see e.g. Santos et al 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-021-09546-3). Part of our tools have been accepted for inclusion in EBRAINS (ebrains.eu), now a pan-European infrastructure (following the inclusion into the Esfrii roadmap).