Brevia Research Writing Competition
The Harvard College Undergraduate Research Association (HCURA) is pleased to announce its inaugural research writing contest for high school students. All high school students from anywhere in the world are eligible. Students on a gap year are also eligible as long as they have not begun post-secondary schooling. Winners will be published in Brevia, the official publication of HCURA, and Harvard College’s premier popular research magazine. Brevia’s mission is to engage the general public in research through articles explaining particular areas of research in simple, accessible language. Check out Brevia’s latest issue for examples of our articles.
In addition to being published in Brevia, the top 3 winners will receive a research conversation with a Harvard faculty member in their discipline of interest as well as free admission to the nation’s largest undergraduate research conference, where they can hear from esteemed keynote speakers and meet undergraduates from across the nation. The top 10 winners will receive personal article feedback from Harvard faculty.
We encourage anyone to submit, regardless of your background in research or writing. We especially encourage those who are part of underrepresented communities to apply!
In addition to being published in Brevia, the top 3 winners will receive a research conversation with a Harvard faculty member in their discipline of interest as well as free admission to the nation’s largest undergraduate research conference, where they can hear from esteemed keynote speakers and meet undergraduates from across the nation. The top 10 winners will receive personal article feedback from Harvard faculty.
We encourage anyone to submit, regardless of your background in research or writing. We especially encourage those who are part of underrepresented communities to apply!
Submission Timeline
Oct 3rd: Competition Opens
October 17th: Presubmission workshop led by Brevia Editors-in-Chief (Recording & Slides)
Oct 31st (midnight EDT): Deadline for article submission
Mid November: Top 50 articles announced
Early December - Top three articles announced
October 17th: Presubmission workshop led by Brevia Editors-in-Chief (Recording & Slides)
Oct 31st (midnight EDT): Deadline for article submission
Mid November: Top 50 articles announced
Early December - Top three articles announced
Submission Guidelines
The article must be under 500 words (not including title/references) and written in the form of a Brevia article: a popular press article explaining a specific area of research. It does not have to be research that you have done yourself, but simply an area you are interested in and have read research papers on. The article should have a single author, but you are allowed to get feedback from peers, teachers, or any other sources before submitting. You are only permitted to submit one article.
We recommend reading at least 1-2 Brevia articles first to get a sense of what we are looking for. We hosted a pre-submission workshop to discuss what makes a strong Brevia article. Please see our style guide below for more information on how to format your article and references.
Sign up for email updates at tinyurl.com/rwcupdates2020
Reference the writing style guide at tinyurl.com/rwcguide2020
Contact brevia+writingcompetition@hcura.org with any remaining questions!
We recommend reading at least 1-2 Brevia articles first to get a sense of what we are looking for. We hosted a pre-submission workshop to discuss what makes a strong Brevia article. Please see our style guide below for more information on how to format your article and references.
Sign up for email updates at tinyurl.com/rwcupdates2020
Reference the writing style guide at tinyurl.com/rwcguide2020
Contact brevia+writingcompetition@hcura.org with any remaining questions!
Top 50 Winners (in no particular order)
Below are the top 50 winners from the inaugural Research Writing Competition. The authors of the top ten (and top three) articles have been notified via email. Congratulations to everyone who participated!
Adit Seth: The market solution to climate change
Alex Wang: Paperdemic
Riley Kong: Treating Autism in the Gut
Sanyah Nabi: Virtual Reality: A New Reality for Binge Eating
Ghena Kubba: A SMART Discovery: New Gelatin-Based Microcarrier
Sneha Jaiswal: Gravitational Waves Unlock the Mysteries of the Universe
Pranav Padmanabhan: Making Sense of the Moon’s Magnetism
Alvin Lu: Teaching Computers to Master StarCraft II
Rachel Lee: Daffodils to Cure Cancer
Divyash Shah: Zombie Cells: Good or Evil?
Natalie Pan: One Breakthrough Closer to Treating Dementia
Brian Chen: Seismic Symptoms of COVID-19
Sally Zhu: Intelligence without a brain: Single-celled slime molds
Olivia Aloi: Motivated Forgetting: Feeling vs. Fleeing Threatening Memories
Sabrina Zhu: The Power of the Brain-Machine Interface: How We Can Help Victims of Paralysis
Manasvini Kothari: The Great Resurgence
Yvonne Kim: A Promise for An Earlier Diagnosis and Intervention of Autism
Rena Liu: The Quest for Dark Matter
Annika Krovi: Stopping the Mutants (in Mitochondrial DNA)
Henry Serrano-Wu: Why Tom Brady Still Matters to Me
Rory Cronin: The Healing Horse: The Beneficial Effect of Equine Intervention Therapy on Lifelong Neurological Disorders
Pranav Ramesh: Digital Rabbit Holes: The Relationship Between Recommender Systems And Confirmation Bias
Ian Kim: The Death-Defying Diabolical Ironclad Beetle
Naomi Yamaguchi: The Power of Music in Alzheimer's
Brian Ham: Are We Living in a Simulation?
Sophia Stefanakis: Deep Dive into the Cell Biology of Illness
Mehwish Mirza: Delivery of mirna-148b as a potential treatment for MS
Aron Choe: Societal conceptions about appearance and beauty
Jennifer Do-Dai: Paving the Way Towards a Cure for Cystic Fibrosis
Chris Jung: How to Write a Memory
Baxter Meyer: A heart-ly trivial affair
Sofia Principe: The American Fight or Flight: Evaluating the Impact of Vaccine Hesitancy
Aditya Venkatesh: Understanding procrastination through action control
Jaya Kolluri: Ancient Minds on Modern Problems: Who held the key to solving today’s threat of world hunger? Aristotle vs. Plato
David Cho: It Wasn't Me!
Ibrahim Omeish: Refugee Struggles with Non-Communicable Diseases
Aurora Achilles: Everything About Stars
Samuel Feng: Identification of Cancer’s “Achilles Heel” through Machine Learning Algorithms using High-throughput Proteomics and Transcriptomics Data
Irene Kim: Child Obesity and Advertising Restriction
Andrew Junwon Lee: Beyond the Classroom: Combating Antibiotic Pollution as a High School Student
Tiffany Ho: Neurological Complications of COVID-19
Shwetha Rajmohan: Ranked Choice Voting
Medhita Sinha: What happens to your brain in space?
Yoon Lee: Anti-Intellectualism and Public Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jessica Tang: Does Mass Media Enable Genocide
Esha Brar : The Universal Cure for Diseases: That’s Right, Your Gut
Monalisa Almeida: Using Genomes To Find Vaccines
Vivian Lee: DNA Vaccine as a Prime Candidate Against COVID-19
Aditya Krovi: The Use of Switch-List Representations to Support Artificial Intelligence
Emil Rustamli: Finding Earth-like planet in the universe.
Adit Seth: The market solution to climate change
Alex Wang: Paperdemic
Riley Kong: Treating Autism in the Gut
Sanyah Nabi: Virtual Reality: A New Reality for Binge Eating
Ghena Kubba: A SMART Discovery: New Gelatin-Based Microcarrier
Sneha Jaiswal: Gravitational Waves Unlock the Mysteries of the Universe
Pranav Padmanabhan: Making Sense of the Moon’s Magnetism
Alvin Lu: Teaching Computers to Master StarCraft II
Rachel Lee: Daffodils to Cure Cancer
Divyash Shah: Zombie Cells: Good or Evil?
Natalie Pan: One Breakthrough Closer to Treating Dementia
Brian Chen: Seismic Symptoms of COVID-19
Sally Zhu: Intelligence without a brain: Single-celled slime molds
Olivia Aloi: Motivated Forgetting: Feeling vs. Fleeing Threatening Memories
Sabrina Zhu: The Power of the Brain-Machine Interface: How We Can Help Victims of Paralysis
Manasvini Kothari: The Great Resurgence
Yvonne Kim: A Promise for An Earlier Diagnosis and Intervention of Autism
Rena Liu: The Quest for Dark Matter
Annika Krovi: Stopping the Mutants (in Mitochondrial DNA)
Henry Serrano-Wu: Why Tom Brady Still Matters to Me
Rory Cronin: The Healing Horse: The Beneficial Effect of Equine Intervention Therapy on Lifelong Neurological Disorders
Pranav Ramesh: Digital Rabbit Holes: The Relationship Between Recommender Systems And Confirmation Bias
Ian Kim: The Death-Defying Diabolical Ironclad Beetle
Naomi Yamaguchi: The Power of Music in Alzheimer's
Brian Ham: Are We Living in a Simulation?
Sophia Stefanakis: Deep Dive into the Cell Biology of Illness
Mehwish Mirza: Delivery of mirna-148b as a potential treatment for MS
Aron Choe: Societal conceptions about appearance and beauty
Jennifer Do-Dai: Paving the Way Towards a Cure for Cystic Fibrosis
Chris Jung: How to Write a Memory
Baxter Meyer: A heart-ly trivial affair
Sofia Principe: The American Fight or Flight: Evaluating the Impact of Vaccine Hesitancy
Aditya Venkatesh: Understanding procrastination through action control
Jaya Kolluri: Ancient Minds on Modern Problems: Who held the key to solving today’s threat of world hunger? Aristotle vs. Plato
David Cho: It Wasn't Me!
Ibrahim Omeish: Refugee Struggles with Non-Communicable Diseases
Aurora Achilles: Everything About Stars
Samuel Feng: Identification of Cancer’s “Achilles Heel” through Machine Learning Algorithms using High-throughput Proteomics and Transcriptomics Data
Irene Kim: Child Obesity and Advertising Restriction
Andrew Junwon Lee: Beyond the Classroom: Combating Antibiotic Pollution as a High School Student
Tiffany Ho: Neurological Complications of COVID-19
Shwetha Rajmohan: Ranked Choice Voting
Medhita Sinha: What happens to your brain in space?
Yoon Lee: Anti-Intellectualism and Public Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jessica Tang: Does Mass Media Enable Genocide
Esha Brar : The Universal Cure for Diseases: That’s Right, Your Gut
Monalisa Almeida: Using Genomes To Find Vaccines
Vivian Lee: DNA Vaccine as a Prime Candidate Against COVID-19
Aditya Krovi: The Use of Switch-List Representations to Support Artificial Intelligence
Emil Rustamli: Finding Earth-like planet in the universe.