apdavison

The "Human Brain Project" was also an NIH funding initiative in the 1990s, which was hugely influential in kickstarting the field of neuroinformatics (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroinformatics)

I know several people who have done PhDs in neural simulation and then gone on to work in industry (e.g. banking, IT consultancy).

I've also come across a couple of startups building on brain-inspired computing. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Brain Corporation in San Diego http://www.braincorporation.com

I would suggest checking back after the summer, which is when the project should actually start.

Also note, "The HBP has allocated a large proportion of its funding to what we call Competitive Calls. The HBP Competitive Calls Programme will allow researchers from outside the HBP Consortium to propose research and applications development projects using the HBP platforms and to receive funding from the HBP. Proposals will be evaluated by peer reviewers from outside the Consortium. We expect to see many proposals for research and approaches that the current Consortium has never considered"

and

"From year 3 onwards the HBP will fund a large number of HBP Ph.D studentships and post-doctoral fellowships."

(my understanding is that these are in addition to any postdocs recruited by partner organizations using their individual funding for the project).

Henry Markram, the coordinator of the Human Brain Project, is also one of the founders of Frontiers (http://frontiersin.org), a scientist-led, open-access publisher, so I think it's fair to say there is already a strong commitment to open access publishing within the project.