Background

Who We Are

The Allen Institute for Brain Science is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. Through a product-focused approach, we generate innovative public resources used by researchers and organizations around the globe. Additionally, we drive technological and analytical advances, creating new knowledge and providing new ways to address questions about the brain in health and disease. Our work and efforts are intended to fuel discovery for the broader scientific community worldwide.

The Allen Institute was launched in 2003 with generous seed funding from founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and is supported by a diversity of public and private funds.

Fueling Discovery

We utilize a multidisciplinary approach, mainly because our one-of-a-kind projects require new ways of integrating insights from many areas of technical expertise. However, we are ultimately more compelled by the multidisciplinary reach of these revolutionary projects.

To this end, we provide a growing collection of unique online public resources comprising vast data sets and sophisticated data search and viewing tools, all openly accessible via the ALLEN Brain Atlas data portal. With tens of thousands of researchers worldwide accessing, mining and analyzing them, these resources set the stage for breakthroughs by researchers at the frontiers of science.