Brains Unlimited First Stone Ceremony

27th September 2011

The Brains Unlimited mega project has celebrated its first stone ceremony on 3 October. During the official ceremony, held at the Oxfordlaan construction site on the Maastricht Health Campus, the key stakeholders literally carried their weight for this project.

The ceremony launched the construction of a scanner lab for high-quality scientific research on human behaviour and common (brain) diseases. The project’s crowning asset is an fMRI scanner with an ultra-high magnetic field of 9.4 Tesla, one of only four of its kind worldwide.

An integrated scanner lab for three fMRI scanners with ultra-high magnetic fields of 3.0, 7.0 and 9.4 Tesla will be manufactured for the Brains Unlimited project. The location will also house spin-off companies (the Neuropartner Incubator) and new buildings for the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. The scanners will be phased into operation in 2012 and 2013.

This extensive project was made possible with the help of many partners. For this reason, fourteen stones instead of just one were laid during the festive launch ceremony by members of the UM Executive Board (Martin Paul, Gerard Mols and André Postema), Léon Frissen (Board of Directors, Brains Unlimited), Renk Roborgh (Director General of Higher Education, OCW), Guy Peeters (MUMC+ Executive Board), Mark Verheijen (Provincial Executive), Albert Nuss (alderman City of Maastricht), Bernadette Jansma (Dean, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience), Jan Cobbenhagen (UM Holding/Neuropartner), Harm-Jan Driessen (Maastricht Health Campus), Kees Smaling (Siemens Healthcare Nederland), Menno Horning (Ministry of Economic Affairs), and Remco Resinger (Stimulus Programme Management).

Brains Unlimited, part of the Maastricht Health Campus, is a new (neuro) imaging platform that will assist the scientific and business sectors in furthering their understanding of common diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, schizophrenia and MS and gain additional insight into the development of human behaviour. In addition to these research projects, new full-time and part-time career-oriented master’s programmes will be developed in the field of neurophysics and neuroimaging.

Professor Martin Paul, UM Executive Board President, views Brains Unlimited as the first in a series of ambitious projects on the Maastricht Health Campus. “Many more opening ceremonies will follow this one to celebrate the introduction of new facilities in the field of chronic illnesses, cardiovascular disease, public health, primary healthcare and neuroscience. The campus will thereby become a leading European hotspot in the biomedical sector, with innovative research, excellent education, outstanding clinical care and entrepreneurship, and the convergence of the science and business sectors.”

Provincial Executive of Economic Affairs, Mark Verheijen, deems this innovative development extremely important, particularly due to its economic potential. “This project combines innovation with the education of very intelligent individuals. It will have a powerful magnetic effect on institutions, organisations and knowledge-intensive companies in the southern Netherlands and bordering countries. The centre will become a veritable breeding ground for applied innovation in the field of neuroscience and related disciplines. It will strengthen the existing knowledge infrastructure and therefore make an important contribution to the further development of the Maastricht Health Campus and the southeast Netherlands region.”

Siemens Healthcare, responsible for manufacturing and turnkey delivery of the scanner lab, is extremely proud of this prestigious project by Maastricht University. Siemens is the only manufacturer in the world capable of delivering a 9.4 tesla MRI scanner. “The task of creating these powerful MRI scanners is unique and one of the largest assignments in our history. With this project, Siemens Healthcare proves it is not only an innovational leader, but also a partner in a great research project that, in my opinion, may earn itself a Nobel Prize,” according to Kees Smaling, director of the Dutch Siemens Healthcare branch.