HERSHEY, PA– Indian-American kids have dominated the scene at various championship competitions in the United States, including Spelling Bee and Geographic Bee, but it was hard not to see name of an Indian-American winner in the USA National Brain Bee Championship competition.
Students from around the country met last weekend at Penn State University College of Medicine to compete in the twelfth annual USA National Brain Bee Championship.
The USA Brain Bee is a competition about the human brain for students, 13 to 19 years of age. Winners from 56 Brain Bee Chapter competitions in 36 states were invited to compete to test their knowledge of such topics as intelligence, emotions, memory, sleep, vision, hearing, sensations, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, addictions and brain research. The competition involved anatomy, histology, radiology, and pathology of real human brains, and the diagnosis of patients with brain disorders.
After a challenging and exhausting two days of competition with a record number of competitors, the winner and 2019 USA Brain Bee Champion is John Yang from Newark, New Jersey. Second place went to Julia Collin from Piscataway, New Jersey. Third place went to Claire Wang of Los Angeles, California.
John will go on to represent the United States in the World Brain Bee Championship in Daegu, South Korea, competing against champions from 26 other countries. The World Championship will be held in conjunction with the International Brain Research Organization’s World Congress of Neuroscience.
The USA Championship Coordinators from Penn State University College of Medicine were Drs. Kala Venkiteswaran and Dr. Thyagarajan Subramanian.
Traditionally, this event was hosted by the University of Maryland, Baltimore, during Brain Awareness Week. This is the first year that it was taken on the road. Every year, from now on, it will be in a different city hosted by a different university.
The USA Brain Bee is an officially sanctioned Regional Brain Bee of the International Brain Bee. The Founder of the International Brain Bee and The National Director of the USA Brain Bee is Dr. Norbert Myslinski, Department of Neural and Pain Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore. Currently, there are about 200 Brain Bee Chapters in 50 countries in 6 continents. Dr. Norbert Myslinski founded the International Brain Bee twenty-one years ago and says “Its purpose is to motivate young students to learn about the human brain and inspire them to seek careers in the basic and clinical neurosciences to help treat and find cures for brain disorders. We build better brains to fight brain disorders.”
