A
COMPUTATIONAL
FOUNDATION
FOR LIFE,
BRAINS & MINDS
BARCELONA
COMPUTATIONAL
FOUNDATION
BCOM studies life, brains, and minds as computational phenomena, translating first-principles research into models, methods, and technologies.
Our mission is to advance computational neuropsychiatry and neurophenomenology, pioneer neurosynthetic AI, and help build better lives and societies — biological, hybrid, or synthetic.
RESEARCH PILLARS
science with impact
COMPUTATIONAL NEUROPSYCHIATRY
How do we turn whole-brain models and neurophenomenology into precision mental-health care?
ARTIFICIAL & SYNTHETIC INTELLIGENCE
How do we build safer, data-efficient, brain-inspired AI and engineer safer human/AI hybrid ecosystems?
SOCIETY OF AGENTS
How do simulated societies of agents illuminate social learning and cultural evolution?
PHILOSOPHY & ETHICS
DIGITAL PHYSICS & AIT
LIFE & EVOLUTION
EDUCATION & CULTURE
ART & SCIENCE STUDIO
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
PATHWAYS TO IMPACT
01
REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
BCOM builds models of brains and minds and translates them into applications. A model earns its place by compression: finding the simple structure beneath complex dynamics. The same framework describes a brain, an ecosystem, or a society of agents, and reveals where those dynamics fail into pathology.
Brains · Minds · Societies
02
R&D INFRASTRUCTURE
Every BCOM project runs on shared software, simulation platforms, and architecture. At the centre is the BCOM Ontology: a common language that hands each project the same foundations, so that a brain model and an ecosystem model are built on the same principles and can speak to each other.
Software · Simulation · Ontology
03
IP & SPIN-OUTS
Patents, codebases, and protocols generated by BCOM research, available for licensing or co-development. Selected research lines mature into spin-out companies built with industry partners, so that what starts as a model ends up in the hands of the clinicians, engineers, and institutions who can use it.
Licensing · Co-development
04
TALENT FACTORY
The BCOM Academy brings together people working across the life sciences, art, and humanities, in studios, exchanges, and fellowships. We train scientists who aren't afraid of a deep question, and who keep the pleasure in trying to answer it. Interdisciplinarity and scientific rigour hold the exchange together.
Studios · exchanges · fellowships
THE MOMENT IS RIGHT,
TIME IS NOW
Abundant computational power, rigorous mathematical tools, AI advancement, big data, and exceptional talent have arrived at the same time. BCOM is the shared infrastructure that lets fields speak a common computational language and build a durable foundation for the science of tomorrow.
01. Computational Power
02. Mathematical tools
03. AI advancement
04. Big Data
05. TALENT
Board & leadership
Francesca Castaldo
Co-founder &
Executive Director
Computational neuroscientist focused on brain‑network models and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Giulio Ruffini
Co-founder &
Scientific Director
Physicist and neurotech founder pioneering neuromodulation, computational modeling and clinical translation.
Gustavo Deco
Trustee
ICREA professor at UPF and global leader in whole‑brain modeling and clinical translation.
Ricard Solé
Trustee
ICREA professor and complex‑systems theorist at UPF and Santa Fe Institute; expert in synthetic biology and origins of life.
Karl Friston
Head Scientific Advisory Board
UCL neuroscientist and psychiatrist; architect of SPM, DCM and the Free Energy Principle.
Advisory board
Karl Friston • Giulio Ruffini • Gustavo Deco • Ricard Solé • Tomaso Poggio • Earl K. Miller • Michael Levin • Robin Carhart-Harris • David Wolpert • Xiaosi Gu • Joseph Henrich • Javier Marquez Ruiz • Dirk de Ridder • Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo • Joana Cabral • Edward Rietman • Hector Zenil • Vladimir Litvak • Jorge F. Mejias • Miguel Ángel García‑Cabezas • Mehdi Khamassi • Michael D. Fox • Giacomo Koch
partnerships
