The Australian Brain Bee Challenge

The Australian Brain Bee Challenge is a huge neuroscience competition that runs across Australia and New Zealand, with multiple rounds that span the year. At the beginning of the year, around 50 year 10 students chose Brain Bee as a co-curricular, which was the beginning of a valuable journey. 

None of us knew much about it at all; we signed up to Education Perfect, were assigned a series of modules to study regarding countless aspects of neuroscience, and showed up to our co-curricular sessions every week.

Round 1 was held at the end of term 1, and 13 of us discovered that we had made it to round 2, where we would compete in the state finals. Another set of modules was assigned, and we dove into the world of touch, pain, the autonomic nervous system and three key neurodegenerative diseases. With the common occurrences of these across the world, learning about Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease was very enlightening and educational, providing us all an insight into the world of disease. 

On the 30th of July, we all sat the Round 2 Part 1 test for the Brain Bee at school, which challenged our knowledge from both rounds we had studied for so far. Then, just a week later, we all went to the Florey Institute of Advancing Brain Research for a day out and immersion in neuroscience. Many other schools’ state finalists were there as well, all of us keen students. 

The day began with an introduction from Professor Sarah Whittle, the Head of Neurodevelopmental Research at the Centre for Youth Mental Health, as well as a short speech from Rapha Kempler, a fellow JMSS student and 2024’s state final winner. Following that, the top-performing students in Round 2 Part 1 were announced and taken aside to do the Round 2 Part 2 test, which would determine the state winner. Three students from John Monash made it to Part 2, which is an astounding achievement! While they were completing the test, the remaining students watched the team challenge videos that each school had created. There were many creative and informative videos explaining a process from round 1 or round 2 that we had studied. The JMSS video challenge team were awarded first place for their video! Congratulations to Inuki Abeysinghe, Ksenia Kurenysheva, Elana Ronagh, and Sebastian Seah for their hard work on it. 

With morning tea and lunch provided, the day also involved us receiving tours of the institute’s labs and talks from PhD students in the field. We were also invited to visit and look around their anatomy museum, which was truly fascinating; it contained real human tissue and body parts that had been preserved and maintained for up to hundreds of years. It was a room for education and engagement with human background and anatomy- something none of us had experienced before. It was very eye-opening, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity. 

The day wrapped up with announcements of the state winner and final photos, and goodbyes. Unfortunately, no JMSS student made it as the state winner this year. However, this journey was extremely valuable and has provided us with memories and knowledge that will last a lifetime. It is difficult to express exactly how much I enjoyed the learning experience as well as the tight community we built with one another. It is all thanks to M. Perry, who guided and supported us throughout the entire process. 

~ Alisa Krivulin