The Harvard Brain's Fusion Research Challenge (FusionRC, or “the Challenge”) is an international interdisciplinary research paper competition for high-achieving secondary school students (between the ages of 13 and 18).
The Challenge asks students to write a 1,000-word narrative review paper grounded in academic research that provides one answer to the question: How can intersecting ideas from different academic disciplines improve our understanding of the brain? Narrative reviews may discuss interdisciplinary areas of studies that are actively being researched or propose new interdisciplinary approaches across the loosely defined field of brain sciences. The prompt is intended to be interpreted very broadly; prospective entrants should not be very concerned about whether their paper idea qualifies. Entrants are especially encouraged to put ideas from the humanities and the sciences into conversation.
Example narrative review ideas include but are certainly not limited to:
Application of a philosophical theory towards the ethics of brain-computer interaction
Approaches for computer science to further the field of linguistics
Analysis of how journalism and literature influence society’s attitudes towards brain technologies
Application of evolutionary biology experiment strategies to address reproducibility challenges in psychology research
Proposal for how qualitative psychology methods can be applied to develop more humanistic computer science
The 2025 Challenge will be judged by Dr. Eve Valera, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Valera uses a range of methodologies to understand the effects of brain injuries (from blunt force trauma as well as strangulation-related asphyxiation, "Concussion+") in women who have experienced intimate partner violence. As a pioneer in the field for over 25 years, Dr. Valera's work has provided much of the minimal data linking partner inflicted brain injuries to negative cognitive, psychological and neural outcomes.
The top three entries will be published in the Spring 2025 issue of The Harvard Brain alongside research from affiliates of Harvard University.
The deadline to submit to the 2025 Challenge is April 13, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST.
Submit here. (Not ready to submit yet? Sign up for email reminders before the deadline here.)
HISTORY OF THE CHALLENGE
Neurological and psychiatric illnesses often result in fundamental alterations in patients’ experience of core aspects of being human, such as memory and mood. To treat these patients in a humanistic manner, it is important to incorporate perspectives from numerous fields across both the humanities and the sciences.
The mission of The Harvard Brain is to promote conversation between different academic perspectives that examine human behavior and mental life, including those originating from the seven diverse fields that make up the Harvard MBB Interfaculty Initiative: Computer Science, History and Science, Human Evolutionary Biology, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology.
The Challenge was founded by The Harvard Brain to encourage young scholars to join this conversation and advance our understanding of the brain through interdisciplinary inquiry.
ENTERING THE CHALLENGE
The Challenge runs once a year with entries opening in winter and a deadline in April. The logistics of the challenge are described below.
Participants should draft their narrative review paper formatted based upon the APA Style Guide (7th edition) with a strict word limit of 1,000. (Click here for further information on what a narrative review paper is.) Importantly, the narrative review paper should cite articles in peer-reviewed journals upon which the paper bases its claims. JSTOR, PubMed, and Google Scholar represent excellent resources to locate peer-reviewed articles to cite. All entries must be written in English.
All review papers must be submitted here prior to April 13, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST, with no exceptions granted.
Entry Fee: A $10 entry fee is required upon submission. All entry fees will be used towards providing underserved communities with mental health resources. For maximum transparency, we will email all entrants a report detailing how their entry fees were used to increase access to mental health resources once the Challenge has concluded.
Following the Challenge deadline, judges will anonymously review all submissions. The Harvard Brain will notify all entrants of winners in early May. The Spring 2025 issue, including the three Challenge Winners’ papers, will be published on the website in May 2025.