Press Release: USA Brain Bee Championship Winner
(Building Better Brains to Fight Brain Disorders)
Department of Neural and Pain Sciences
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
March 20, 2016
After three days of intense competition, the 2016 USA Brain Bee Champion is Karina Bao representing the Arkansas Brain Bee Chapter. The Brain Bee is a neuroscience competition for teenagers. A record fifty-six Chapter winners from 35 states around the country competed at the University of Maryland in Baltimore on March 18th, 19th and 20th.
Karina is a junior at Little Rock Central High School. Among her prizes are a summer internship at a neuroscience lab, trophies for her school and herself, and the right to represent the United States at the Seventeenth World Brain Bee Championship in Copenhagen, Denmark in July. Second place went to Xuchen Wei representing the Indianapolis, Indiana Chapter, and third place went to William Ellsworth representing the Atlanta, Georgia Chapter. Other cities that placed in the top ten are Birmingham, Chicago, Saint Louis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Biddeford, Maine. A photo and biography of the Champion, and a list of the competitors and their order of finish are attached to this E-mail.
The Brain Bee tests a student’s knowledge of the human brain, including such topics as intelligence, emotions, memory, sleep, vision, hearing, sensations, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, schizophrenia, addictions, brain research and many others. The USA Championship competition involves a neuroanatomy laboratory practical exam with real human brains, patient diagnosis involving face-to-face interactions with patient actors, MRI brain imaging analysis, brain histology, and a final question and answer component.
Karina will now advance to compete in the World Championship hosted this year by the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. She will be competing against about 25 other champions from such countries as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and others.
Dr. Norbert Myslinski founded the International Brain Bee 17 years ago. His organization has expanded to 160 chapters in 40 regions in 6 continents. Its purpose is “to motivate young men and women to learn about the brain, and inspire them to consider careers in basic and clinical neurosciences.” He says “We build better brains to fight brain disorders.”
For more information, contact nmyslinski@umaryland.edu or 410-274-4998 karobinson@umaryland.edu.
