About 9600 high school students across Australia and New Zealand will take part in round one of UQ’s 2008 Australian Brain Bee Challenge tomorrow.
Year 10 and 11 students across Australasia will test their knowledge of brain and neurological diseases in a 35-question quiz, held at their respective schools.
The Challenge has become one of the largest and fastest growing science competitions in the Asia-Pacific region growing from 740 entrants last year to 9592 entrants this year.
Challenge coordinator and UQ neuroscientist, Associate Professor Linda Richards, who began the Australian Brain Bee Challenge in 2006, said she was excited at the jump in numbers.
"It’s really gathering momentum. We now have more than 3500 New South Wales students participating, more than 2000 Queensland students and more than 1300 students from New Zealand in Auckland and Otago," Dr Richards said.
"The challenge is free, the students enjoy it and now teachers are enrolling their whole classes."
The best-scoring students will progress to state finals at UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) on Tuesday, June 24.
"Students who come to the Queensland state final will have a fantastic opportunity to visit UQ, see the campus and experience a number of different neuroscience labs," Dr Richards said.
"We've ensured that schools from more remote areas have an equal chance of competing at the highest levels."
State team winners will receive Zeiss microscopes before going on to national finals at UQ on August 3–4 and the International Brain Bee in Baltimore, Maryland in 2009.
QBI Director Professor Perry Bartlett said he was pleased to support an initiative that promoted neuroscience and involved so many talented young people.
Dr Richards said the Brain Bee Challenge was an important way of correcting misconceptions about neurological disorders as well as recruiting budding research scientists.
"There is so much we don't understand about the brain and how it works, which results in a lot of public misconception about mental disorders and neurological diseases," she said.
"Australia is facing a rise in the number of people with from neurological diseases and disorders, which presents a difficult challenge for science to overcome.
"The Brain Bee Challenge helps the scientific community to engage with the country's best and brightest young people, and encourage them to enter the field of neuroscience research in order to help crack some of those big problems."
QBI research is vital to the development of treatments for neurological disorders such as epilepsy, schizophrenia, stroke, depression and motor neuron disease as well as understanding the molecular and physiological mechanisms regulating brain function.
The state and national finals of the Australian Brain Bee Challenge will involve a live question-and-answer competition that will test students' knowledge on topics such as intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, sleep and addiction.
More details about the Australian Brain Bee Challenge can be found here
Postcodes of participating schools are here
MEDIA: Dr Richards (07 3346 6355) or QBI Communications (07 3346 6414)
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