We are a multidisciplinary group of strongly driven researchers and developers, investing in open source and building a better future, today. 

We come together under a Consortium Agreement establishing a 2 tiered governance (consortium board, and technical board) -check below, at the end of the page, for some history- and always welcome new partners, be them users and contributors, or Institutions interested in engaging to help realizing our vision.

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The name BioDynaMo appeared for the 1st time ever on December the 2nd 2015, when Alberto Di Meglio (CERN) suggested the name, and the original logo adopted by the collaboration in the early days...

...in an email to the team members at the time: Roman Bauer (Newcastle University then), Marcus Kaiser (Newcastle University then), Chris Hayward (Newcastle University then), Marco Manca (CERN then), Fons Rademakers (CERN), Lukas Breitwieser (CERN then), Manuel Mazzara (Innopolis University), Max Talanov (Kazan Federal University), Leonard Johard (Innopolis University).

The project has its roots in the convergence of a CERN openlab and Intel initiative, in partnership with Newcastle University (the agreement, for historical purposes, signe on June the 6th 2015 can be consulted here), to modernize the code of Cx3D, a proposal initiated by Roman Bauer, the Human Green Brain Project by Marcus Kaiser, an initiative aimed at developing a simulation of human brain development, and the strategic investment by a dawning Innopolis University in robotics and neuroinformatics.

On July the 8th 2019, finally, BioDynaMo was constituted as a consortium-led initiative, by the signature of the BioDynaMo Collaboration Agreement between Newcastle University and CERN.

Roman Bauer was elected spokesperson, and the Consortium Board has confirmed his role until today.

Following its constitution, the consortium progressively onboarded its active partners as members:

• Immunobrain Checkpoint joined on August the 29th 2019 (it is no longer a member of the collaboration, officially, since September the 20th 2022)

• GSI Helmholtz Centre joined the consortium on August the 29th 2019

• University of Cyprus joined the consortium on November the 4th 2019

• The Institute of Global Health of the University of Geneva joined on June the 1st 2020

• University of Surrey joined the consortium on September the 2nd 2020 (IP rights were transferred from Newcastle University to University of Surrey on September the 30th 2021)

• SCImPULSE Foundation joined the consortium on November the 11th 2020

The consortium holds circa-annual meetings to discuss (and deliberate upon) all important formal and strategic matters. Past meetings have been held on:

• December the 2nd and 3rd 2019

• October the 16th 2020

• February the 2nd 2021

• September the 13th 2021

• September the 20th  2022

...and it organizes biweekly technical calls, and workshops, to review and discuss scientific/technical matters.

Under the guidance of the first Technical Coordinator, Fons Rademarkers (also founder of ROOT), BioDynaMo has steadily matured, and in 2021 it released v1.0.

Today, BioDynaMo has seen great performance improvements and it has been adopted by researchers from a range of fields beyond biomedicine. For example, the platform has been used to simulate the spread of COVID-19 and to examine socio-economic inequities in the Netherlands.

At the end of 2022 the project entered a new phase, and the consortium will focus more on lowering the barriers to entry for new users and contributors alike. Vasileios Vavourakis has been entrusted with the role of Technical Coordinator by the Consortium Board for this new phase.

The consortium will also work to enhance user experience, interoperability with other simulation softwares and tools, and to further improve the code, with the aim of offering even more modularity and flexibility to users from any domain of application.