A student from Newton (Mass.) South High School took top place in the first Boston Regional Brain Bee, held Saturday, Feb. 11, at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. Ariella Goldman will go on to compete in the International Brain Bee at the University of Maryland in March during Brain Awareness Week.
Goldman beat out 17 other students from Boston-area schools for a $250 prize. Second place went to Rebecca Jeyaraj, also from Newton South, and Victoria Chen from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School took third place. The competition, which is held to help raise public awareness of neuroscience, was sponsored by the Boston Area Neuroscience Group (BANG), the Boston chapter of the National Society for Neuroscience, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Tufts University and the Picower Institute.
After a written test, 11 students advanced to a live question-and-answer competition consisting of three rounds of increasingly difficult questions about brain facts.