On their first meeting after Thanksgiving Break, BRAIN Club addressed an agenda item of great importance: candy canes.

Like high schoolers across the country, BRAIN (Biological Research and Investigations in Neuroscience) Club members planned to sell Candy Grams throughout the holiday season in order to raise funds for club activities. This rather ordinary fundraising effort facilitates club members’ participation in extraordinary activities, like presenting their research at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting.

BRAIN Club unites 9th grade students from Biology 1A—an accelerated survey course in which students complete independent research projects (IRP)—and other students with a passion for neuroscience and developmental biology. Through the guidance of faculty member Melanie Fields, the mentorship of professional scientists, and collaborations with elite institutions, BRAIN Club members design research projects that meld intellectual inquiry with service to society.

What if we could reverse vision or hearing loss? What if we better understood the effects that pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and pollutants have on organisms once they enter waterways? What if we could predict the impact of global weather shifts on avian migration patterns?  

In seeking new insights to these and other queries, BRAIN Club members employ zebrafish, a model organism ideal for studying human development and disease. Throughout the school day, students like Adie Salassie ’22 and Alex Oswald ’22 maintain the laboratory: feeding fish, cleaning tanks, and testing the water. For many of these young researchers, this experience will better prepare them to conduct advanced research later in their careers—even, one day, to run their own laboratories.

Club members compile their findings into research posters, which they present at national conferences like the annual Society for Neuroscience and Society for Developmental Biology Meetings. “There aren’t many high school students who attend these conferences,” explains Akshay Krishnan ’20. “Researchers like to get outside their academic bubbles and share their ideas with us, and they give us helpful advice on our techniques and how we can move our projects to the next stage.”

“We develop confidence and speaking skills during these conferences,” says Rohil Sabherwhal ’20. “Plus, we build connections with the scientists there. I am working with some researchers I met at a conference to get access to certain microscopes and microinjectors I need for my project.” And as BRAIN Club leader Anika Schipma ’19 notes, attending conferences around the country is a great excuse to tour advanced laboratories in new cities.

Of course, candy canes sales don’t cover the full cost of transportation, lodging, and conference fees, but as all good researchers know, securing funding is half the work. Some attendees are able to participate because of the Annual Fund, which provides proportional support for those already on financial aid. And even when offsetting costs means embracing simplicity and sleeping at a local Friends meeting house instead of hotel rooms, BRAIN Club attendees remain thrilled at these opportunities to engage with the broader research community.