Dear NEST Users and Developers!
We are very much looking forward to the NEST Conference 2026 which will take place in two weeks time on
Tuesday / Wednesday 16/17 June 2026.
I am excited to share with you an overview over the program we have assembled with three keynotes, three tutorials, one dozen talks and eleven posters. You will find presenters and contributions below.
Please register at https://nest-simulator.org/conference at your earliest convenience
*
If you want to use the member rate (20€), you must apply for NEST Initiative e.V. membership and pay your dues by Sunday 7 June. Students, including PhD students, do not need to pay membership dues, for all others it is 25€ for 2026. Please go to https://www.easyverein.com/public/NESTINI/applicationform/13809 to apply.
*
Absolutely last deadline for registration is Sunday 14 June at 23.59 CEST (UTC+2).
See you at the NEST Conference 2026!
Hans Ekkehard Plesser on behalf of the organizing committee
Keynote
Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo
Biologically plausible supervised learning in large-scale networks
Fynn Dobler, Maxime Carrire
Lost in translation: How porting a brain-constrained model of word semantics to NEST revealed undocumented model assumptions
Pablo Martinez-Canada
From Circuits to Signals and Back: Integrating Biophysical Forward Modelling and Simulation-Based Inference to Decode Brain Dynamics
Tutorial
Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo
Biologically plausible supervised learning with event-driven eligibility propagation
Charl Linssen, Pooja Babu
Modeling and simulating neuron models from NESTML on neuromorphic hardware
Willem Wybo
Creating, analyzing, simplifying, and simulating biophysical neurons with NEAT
Talks
Carlos Enrique Gutierrez
Neuro-Workflow: Agent-Assisted Brain Modeling
Catherine Schofmann
Scaling Neural Networks On Accelerators With Procedural Connectivity Generation
Gianmarco Tiddia
Scalable network construction method for NEST GPU enables efficient multi-GPU simulations
Jan Eirik Skaar, Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Practice report: Porting a complex network model from BRIAN2 to NEST
Jan Vogelsang, Susanne Kunkel
Rethinking Synapse Placement in NEST for Cache-Efficiency on Many-Core Exascale Architectures
Mahesh Madhav, Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Issue #3217: Making NEST a part of the SPEC CPU 2026 benchmark suite
Melissa Lober
NUMA balancing hampering performance of spiking network simulations
Pedro Ribeiro Pinheiro
Simulating prefrontal cortex dynamics in a data-driven spiking neural network
Rafael Fernando Gigante
A Large-Scale Spiking Network Model of the Primary Motor Cortex
Razvan Gamanut
Subthreshold Dynamics in a Gap-Junction-Coupled PV Network Model of the Claustrum
Sinovia Fotiadou
Bridging NEST Microcircuits to Zerlaut Mean-Field Models: A Reproducible Single-Region Workflow for the Virtual Brain Twin
Tibor Rozsa
Toward reliable visual prosthetic stimulation under highly variable spontaneous activity
Poster
Alex Dimitrov et al
Statistics of spiking neural networks based on counting processes
Ariel Shmilli et al
Long-term memory consolidation in spiking neural networks
Camilo Jara Do Nascimento et al
Dendritic plateau potentials enable learning over long timescales
Charl Linssen et al
Automated code generation of advanced plasticity rules for the SpiNNaker neuromorphic platform using NESTML
Daniel Todt
Parameter specification in spiking neural networks using NEST and simulation-based inference
José Villamar et al
Scaling up to billions of spiking neurons and trillions of synapses with NEST GPU
Krishna Kant Singh
Empowering Neuroscience Research with Portable HPC Containers
Marie Olli
Structural plasticity in large-scale spiking neural networks
Markus Diesmann
On polynomials in spiking neuronal network simulations
Noah Ostendorf
Motiforge: Flexible Motif-Constrained Network Generation for Structured Neural Architectures
Pooja Babu
Modeling and simulating two-compartment neuron model with NESTML on NEST GPU
--
Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Research Committee Chair, Faculty of Science and Technology
President, NEST Initiative e.V.
Department of Data Science
Faculty of Science and Technology
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway
Phone +47 6723 1560
Email hans.ekkehard.plesser(a)nmbu.no<mailto:hans.ekkehard.plesser@nmbu.no>
Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser
Dear NEST Users & Developers!
I would like to invite you to our next fortnightly Open NEST Developer Video Conference today
*Monday May 18, at 11:30 CEST (UTC+0200).*
As usual, in the Project team round, a contact person of each team will give a short statement summarizing ongoing and planned work in the team and highlight cross-cutting points that need discussion among the teams. The remainder of the meeting we would go into a more in-depth discussion of topics that came up on the mailing list or that are suggested by the teams.
Feel free to join the meeting also if it’s just to bring your own quick questions for direct discussion in the in-depth section.
Agenda
* Welcome
* Review of NEST User Mailing List
* Project team round
* In-depth discussion
The agenda for this meeting is also available online, see https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-18-Open-NEST-Developer-… <https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-18-Open-NEST-Developer-…>
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Cheers,
Dennis Terhorst
Log-in information
We use a virtual conference room provided by DFN <https://www.dfn.de/en/> (Deutsches Forschungsnetz).
You can use the web client to connect. We however encourage everyone to use a headset for better audio quality or even a proper video conferencing system (see below) or software when available.
Web client
* Visit https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800 <https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800>
* Enter your name and allow your browser to use camera and microphone
* The conference does not need a PIN to join, just click join and you’re in.
In case you see a dfnconf logo and the phrase “Auf den Meetingveranstalter warten”, just be patient, the meeting host needs to join first (a voice will tell you).
VC system/software
How to log in with a video conferencing system, depends on you VC system or software.
* Using the H.323 protocol (eg Polycom): |vc.dfn.net##97938800| or |194.95.240.2##97938800|
* Using the SIP protocol:97938800@vc.dfn.de <mailto:97938800@vc.dfn.de>
* By telephone: |+49-30-200-97938800|
For those who do not have a video conference system or suitable software, Polycom provides a pretty good free app for iOS and Android, so you can join from your tablet (Polycom RealPresence Mobile, available from AppStore/PlayStore). Note that firewalls may interfere with videoconferencing in various and sometimes confusing ways.
For more technical information on logging in from various VC systems, please see
http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4 <http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4>
--
Dipl.-Phys. Dennis Terhorst
Coordinator Software Development
Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6)
Computational and Systems Neuroscience
&
JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10)
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine
Jülich Research Center, Member of the Helmholz Association
52425 Jülich, Germany
http://www.csn.fz-juelich.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
52425 Jülich
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jülich
Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Düren Nr. HR B 3498
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Stefan Müller
Geschäftsführung: Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht (Vorsitzende),
Dr. Stephanie Bauer (stellvertretende Vorsitzende),
Prof. Dr. Ir. Pieter Jansens, Prof. Dr. Laurens Kuipers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------