Chapter 116 Neuroinformatics in the Netherlands Jaap van Pelt and Arjen van Ooyen Abstract In the past decade the Netherlands has actively participated in the OECD initiatives for an international program in neuroinformatics. Simultaneously, many activities have been unfolded towards a national program in neuroinformatics in the Netherlands. This paper brieﬂy summarizes these activities within the national context and opportunities. Introduction From the beginning on, the OECD Global Science Forum initiative to promote Neu- roinformatics was supported by the Netherlands. Several factors contributed to this interest. Neuroscience takes a prominent place among the life sciences. Theoretical biology programs at several universities have created a community of researchers trained in modeling in the life sciences, including the neurosciences (computational neuroscience). The Netherlands has an excellent high-speed IT infrastructure for higher education and research (SURFNET), and advanced super-computing facili- ties, supported by the Netherlands national computing facilities foundation (NWO- NCF). A steering group was established to promote a national neuroinformatics program, by (i) building a neuroinformatics community, (ii) organizing workshops (twice a year), working on awareness of neuroinformatics among governmental and industrial organizations, and (iii) launching a website [1]. It resulted in a Master- plan Neuroinformatics with recommendations to the Netherlands Organization for Scientiﬁc Research (NWO). At the 21th of March 2007 NWO signed the agreement with INCF through the joint support of the NWO departments for Health R&D (ZonMw), Earth and Life Sciences (ALW), Social Sciences (MaGW) and Physical Sciences (EW), making the Netherlands the 12th member of INCF. J. van Pelt Department of Experimental Neurophysiology, Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Re- search, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: jaap.van.pelt@falw.vu.nl R. Wang et al. (eds.), Advances in Cognitive Neurodynamics, C  Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 673