Rafael Yuste? Never heard of him.

Neither had most of the world until Obama mentioned his project in the State of the Union Address at the White House in February. Since then, he's popped up in places like the New York Times and Nature magazine.

OK. So who is he then?

Well, Dr Rafael Yuste is a Spanish neurologist at Columbia University who's been chosen to head up President Obama's Brain Activity Map Project. This is a massive 15-year research effort which will help us understand  — and hopefully cure — diseases like schizophrenia,dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and epilepsy.

Wow! That sounds complex and very pricy.

Indeed it is. If the project gets the green light from the US Congress in 2014, we're talking a multi-billion dollar plan.

But all signs point to Rafa being the man for the job. He's a professor of biological sciences and neuroscience who's been working out of Columbia’s Kavli Institute for Brain Science for the last 16 years. 

He's aiming to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for our DNA.

“The Human Genome Project cost $3 billion, and that was 15 years ago,” says Dr. Yuste. “This could be of that scale, or larger.”