The Brain and Behaviour camp 2014

The Brainstorming Camp is a Bombay International School initiative to give high school students an opportunity to conduct hands-on scientific inquiry and research under the guidance of ‘real world’ scientists. The programme is the first of its kind in India and was received with tremendous success by schools and colleges in 2013 and 2014.

This year, the event took place in Mumbai from September 12-14, 2014 in collaboration with the Sophia College for Women and with the support of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

During the three-day intensive programme, the participating students from grades 11 and 12 learned about intricacies of the human brain in a cross-disciplinary context from experts in the fields of science and cognition. Students attended inter active seminars, conducted hands-on experiments and presented their own papers. Students were sensitized to the fact that there are cross-disciplinary connections between Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology and Computer Engineering.

Participating schools had worked on an original research question and developed their ideas under the guidance of a mentor – a scientist from TIFR. Our Students also participated in the Bain Bee challenge a quiz on neuroscience.

Both of our teams performed very well throughout the camp. Anushka Shetty & Feryl Badiani not only put up a good fight at the brain bee their paper also made it to the final presentation round. Our winning team was Supriya Kamath & Pranati Wadhawan with their dual achievement - winning the Brain Challenge and the Best Research Paper and Presentation. The icing on the cake was an offer from the leading scientist Dr Vidita Vaidya from TIFR to have our students intern at her lab!