First inaugural Central Florida Brain Bee a success with 32 competitors

Neuroscience competitions - called Brain Bees - are hard to find, but one UCF graduate student decided to bring the competition to Central Florida. 

Having never been exposed to neuroscience until later in his college years, Joseph Bello decided that creating a Brain Bee would be beneficial to high-school students.

“My goal was to expose high schoolers to neuroscience to spark their interest and get them to go to college,” said Bello, who plans to attend medical school.

Back in November, he began planning the competition and reached out to schools to gauge students’ interest.

Four schools responded - Ocoee High, Dr. Phillips High, Freedom High and Edgewater High. 

To prepare the students for competition, Bello helped create after-school clubs where teams could study and prepare for the Brain Bee.

On the day of competition, which was held on Saturday, Feb. 25, 32 students competed for the title of Central Florida Brain Bee champion. 

“I took it on as a side project, and it was way bigger than I expected,” Bello said.

There were three rounds of competition. First, the students sat through a written exam of 30 questions. Then, they examined human-brain samples and various parts of the human anatomy for identification. The scores were then tallied with the top ten students advancing to the final round of questions given by a panel of judges.

“I had a blast,” Bello said. “It was a great time. It was nice to see it come together. I didn’t know how it was going to play out because I had to make everything from scratch. It was stressful, but it went perfectly.”

In addition to the top three students winning awards for their achievement, the scores from the top five students from each school were tallied for an overall team win. This year, the team from Dr. Phillips High took that trophy home.

With his first Central Florida Brain Bee complete, Bello is already looking ahead to next year. Two more schools have already expressed their interest in participating.

The goal is to raise money to send the winning students to the national competition, Bello said.

To support the Central Florida Brain Bee, visit gofundme.com/central-florida-brain-bee.

Contact Brittany Gaines at [email protected].