Firefly is a proud sponsor of the Toronto Brain Bee, a knowledge-based competition for high school students. It tests the knowledge of the students in neuroscience.
The 15th Annual Toronto Brain Bee competition took place at the Medical Sciences Building, on April 5, 2013. 56 students from 26 high schools in the Toronto area participated in the competition.
Following three rounds of questions the top three winners were:
- Sophia Ly (first place),
- Mithunan Ravindran (second place) and
- Olivia Ly (third place).
The first place winner Sophia Ly will represent Toronto at the 6th Annual CIHR Canadian National Brain Bee competition (www.brainbee.ca), which will take place at McMaster University in Hamilton on June 1, 2013.
The 2013 Brain Bee competition was jointly sponsored by the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience, the Department of Physiology and the Firefly Foundation. The students were welcomed by Professor Zhong-Ping Feng (Coordinator of Toronto Brain Bee, Department of Physiology), Professor Steve Matthews (Chair, Department of Physiology), and Sharon Zillmer (Manager, Firefly Foundation).
The Brain Bee competition was hosted by Andrew Barszczyk (Graduate student, Physiology) and Danielle DeSouza (Graduate student, IMS).
Between the first and second rounds of questions, the students visited the Anatomy Museum at the Division of Anatomy, watched a Firefly video presentation of 2011 Toronto Brain Bee, and mini documentaries created with the top 3 competitors that year.
Three short research presentations were given by Rachel Newsome (Barense lab, Psychology), Catharine Mielnik (Salahpour lab, Pharmacology) and Nancy Dong (Feng lab, Physiology).
