EGYPT'S Brain Bee

Press Release regarding Egypt's participation at the 2018 International Brain Bee competition
 

Seventeen years old David Usama from Egypt has successfully participated and achieved the 19th place in the International Brain Bee Competition at Europe’s biggest brain research conference in Berlin. Twenty-five young finalists, aged between 13 and 18 from 25 countries, took part in the competition. The judges were all impressed by their knowledge of the most complex organ of all living beings: the human brain.

The programme of the final competition would be a credit to any university. The students assessed tissue sections of nerve cells and proved their knowledge in neuroanatomy on real brains from the department of anatomy at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. They diagnosed (fictitious) patients based on research findings and undertook a written exam that tests their knowledge across the entire spectrum of neuroscience from Alzheimer's to intelligence, memory, sleep and schizophrenia.

David, who is attending the STEM Assiut high school in upper Egypt, is the winner of the Egyptian national competition in neuroscience (Egyptian Brain Bee) after competing with over 200 students from all over Egypt. In Berlin, he joined the conference, the FENS Forum of Neuroscience, of more than 7000 brain researchers from 77 countries. David was accompanied and mentored by Moataz Assem, founder of the Egyptian Brain Bee and a PhD student in Cognition and Brain Sciences at Cambridge University.

The Egyptian Brain Bee was established in 2016 and has been running for its the third consecutive year by the Alexandria Neuroscience Committee (ANC), a section of the NGO Child Neurology Caring Society in Alexandria (CNCSA). The competition is entirely organized by volunteers from students and members of the Faculty of Medicine at Alexandria University including: Nardene Saad (2018 coordinator), Salma Said, Samar AbdElHady, Prof. Tarek Omar (CNCSA director), Prof. Jaidaa Mekky and Prof. Bassma ElSabaa. Travel costs to the international competition were supported by the Naguib Sawiris foundation.

ANC is preparing to hold the fourth Egyptian Brain Bee later this year and hopes more students will be able to join the competition from all over Egypt.

"The goal of the Brain Bee's is to inspire young men and women to study the brain and motivate them to think about careers in basic and clinical neuroscience," says the founder of the Brain Bee program, Dr. Norbert Myslinski of the University of Maryland (USA).
The international Brain Bee Competition was founded in 1998 by Dr. Norbert Myslinski in the USA. Meanwhile, the national preliminary rounds take place in more than 50 countries, with the participation of over 25,000 young people each year. The international championship is always held in association with a major neuroscience conference. The programme is almost entirely run by volunteers.

In early 2018, the International Brain Bee was established as a charitable organization. Its international partners and supporters are the American Psychological Association (APA), the Dana Foundation, the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). The 2018 International Brain Bee Competition in Berlin was supported by the German Hertie Foundation.