ULB Research ⤶	Description of the Unit	Projects of the Unit	Composition
Collaborations of the Unit	Protected technologies	Publications	Skills

Economics, Finance, Management and Public Policy

Economic development is a core concern for our societies, with finance playing a key role. For their part, public authorities, private-sector decision-makers and other social stakeholders are demanding to be better informed about the issues and mechanisms at work in these fields. The ULB is actively developing research activities in these fields, of both a fundamental and applied nature. Approaches used vary from team to team and from their orientation (fundamental research / applied research), and range from modelling the behaviour of economic players (individuals, households, companies, public authorities) to their empirical validation, via the use of laboratory experiments, historical perspectives, qualitative and institutional analyses. Moreover, several teams are actively involved in developing mathematical and statistical tools in the field of economics and finance. All in all, the research teams working in the field of economics, management, finance and public policy cover a wide spectrum of issues, including the banking and finance sectors, competition policy and economic regulation, European integration, globalisation, regional development, the economies of developing countries, the labour market, education, health, the environment, entrepreneurship, marketing, innovation and RD, the non-commercial sector and HR management.

Neurosciences

Understanding how the brain functions is undoubtedly one of the most exciting challenges science has to offer, as the brain is not just the most complex structure of the living world, but also plays a major role in what distinguishes us as humans. But understanding the brain is also a major societal issue, with societies confronted by the scourge of neurological diseases, and in particular neurodegenerative diseases associated with aging. What is at stake is, for example, to understand how 20,000 genes control the ''wiring'' of billions of synapses linking up our neurons, what influence the environment has on brain development, from embryo to the young adult, and on age-related degradations, and which mechanisms lead to such diseases as epilepsy, autism, addiction or Alzheimer. To explain how the brain works - or doesn't work -, we need to study the different mechanisms at work on very different scales, from genes to neurons, neural circuits, perception, behaviour and consciousness. Neuroscience research is thus eminently multidisciplinary, ranging from molecular processes to cognitive science, via neurophysiology and neuro-imaging. At the ULB, all this expertise is gathered together in the ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), the home of more than 150 researchers coming from 17 research groups from four faculties. UNI research relies on clinical research. It has at its disposal an exceptional equipment park, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, electro-encephalography and magneto-encephalography, and enabling the study of how neurons function when executing a specific action, with a temporal resolution in the order of one millisecond.