Jan Bjaalie is Executive Director of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and Professor of neuroscience at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Oslo in 1992 and full Professor in 1997. His research group joined the Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience, a Norwegian Centre of Excellence appointed by The Research Council of Norway, in 2002. His laboratory has discovered fundamental principles of sensory map transformations in large projection systems of the brain and has performed novel regional and whole brain atlasing and histological mapping. The laboratory has used ‘gold standard’ anatomical methods in combination with computerized methods for visualization and quantitative analyses, electrophysiology, and in vivo imaging, for studying systems level organization in the brain. In the context of this research, the group has developed a variety of software, including tools for 3-D reconstruction and advanced visualization of neuronal organization as well as database applications for neuroanatomical image data. The tools and databases of the laboratory are made available via the Rodent Brain Workbench, http://rbwb.org. Professor Bjaalie has been partner and coordinator of several EU funded projects and has collaborated extensively with leading laboratories in many countries. He serves on the board of several journals and is a member of the Neuroinformatics Committee of the Society for Neuroscience.