Brain Awareness Week Grants Are Back – Get Up to $1,250 for 2025!

Calls for applications for 2025 Brain Awareness Week are out! Apply by 31st October to get up to $1,250 towards your BAW event that will highlight the importance of neuroscience for our societies.

As you may know already, Brain Awareness Week takes place mid-March annually in just about every corner of the planet. In 2025, it officially falls between March 10th and 16th. If that doesn’t work for you but you’d still like to take part in the global initiative, you can still get the funding as long as your program has to do with neuroscience and carries the official signage of Dana and IBRO.

Head over here to learn more and apply!

An amazing #BrainAwarenessWeek day in the @BHLibraries Jubilee Library. @SussexNeuro, @OGSteele and some amazing volunteers from @SussexNeuroSoc and @Sussex_Psych demoing how our brains send signals to our bodies. pic.twitter.com/KUKNxPbQk1

— Sarah King (@drsarahking) March 16, 2024

What’s New This Year?

First of all, any organization can apply! Unlike in previous years, there are no eligibility restrictions in terms of your organization’s legal form. Previously, the focus used to be on organizations registered as public charities, educational institutions or small businesses.

Secondly, while all neuroscience programs are welcome, they’ll prioritize the multidisciplinary ones that have to do with neuroscience and society. They cite the fields of ethics, law, humanities, medicine, arts, social sciences, policy, education, journalism and public engagement as possible intersections. But those are just examples. To them we add robotics, machine learning and brain-machine interfaces like the ones we made this summer!

As always, applicants who work in underserved communities stand the best chance of getting funded. Also, you can use the money towards buying equipment that you get to keep after Brain Awareness Week! Perfect chance to avail your organization of some BYB gear (or even our complete portable lab bundle) if you haven’t already.

How to Apply?

All you need to do is head over here to register. This year, they simplified the process through SurveyMonkey so that you can do it using your Google account. Then, you’ll have to fill out a form with several details about your organization, its past involvement in Brain Awareness Week if any, as well as your proposal for 2025.

As a registered user, you’ll also gain access to a range of IBRO’s other grants, including funding of travel, parenthood and conference.

@SfNOttawa is at the @SciTechMuseum with fun @BackyardBrains activities for #BrainAwarenessWeek!!!! Today and tomorrow 11am-3pm. ??? pic.twitter.com/XltigvPYpm

— Lauren Butterfield (@l_butterfield6) March 14, 2024

Are There Grants for Europe Too?

Yes! Just like every other year, Dana Foundation is partnering up with Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) to offer up to EUR 1,000 per project towards organizing 2025 Brain Awareness Week. The deadline for European applicants is shorter though, and they need to apply by October 3, 2024.

More details here.

Backyard Brains BAW 2025 Ideas

Bioethics

You might want to try and weigh up the cost to a cockroach that loses a leg against the benefit of getting more kids interested in neuroscience so that some could one day become scientists and maybe find a cure for Alzheimer’s.

• Further reading: Ethical Issues Regarding the Use of Invertebrates in Education
• BYB kit: Neuron SpikerBox

Showing how plants react to different stimuli including pain can also be part of this discussion. We’ve recently had a peer-reviewed study by high-schoolers who put together an open-source library of plant responses and behavior. The experiment is very easy to do, and best of all, anybody can contribute to the online library with their findings!

• Further reading: High School Students Publish a Paper on Plant Physiology in a Notable Journal
• BYB kit: Plant SpikerBox

How to Make Neuroprosthetics Cheaper & Accessible to Everyone

Another societal question is that of neuroprosthetics as a life-changing technology that still has a long way to go to become universally accessible.

Over the years, we’ve seen many brilliant attempts to build custom prosthetical tools using our gear, like this prosthetic finger made by a high-schooler, or the mirror stimulation attempt by an amateur scientist who wanted to treat his spinal cord injury. These and many other projects have done the first step in science: proving that innovation doesn’t only live in big labs, but in any curious soul.

• Further reading: High School Senior Makes an Award-Winning Prosthetic Finger Using Muscle SpikerShield; Amateur Scientist Tries to Hack Human-Human Interface to Treat His Own Spinal Cord Injury
• BYB kits: Human-Human Interface, The Claw

The 1st edition of our MIT Press book also comes with 50+ open-ended experiments. And if you’re a fan of classic human, animal or plant electrophysiology, we’ve got you covered with 5 of our all-time favorites that have already made an amazing track record in scicomm around the world.

New Edition of “How Your Brain Works” at Brain Awareness Week 2024

Schools, museums, libraries, community centers and other public venues in over 75 countries— last week, the entire planet was firing spikes in honor of the brain during Brain Awareness Week 2024! An annual event organized and partly funded by Dana Foundation and International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), it’s the biggest joint scientific outreach in the world whose goal is to get more people to think, talk, make, partake in experiments and get generally excited about the brain.

And just like every previous year, we were part of it too, personally or in spirit through our gear! This time around, our SpikerBoxes have conquered five countries (that we know of): from our own to Canada, the UK, Serbia and Austria.

But the Serbian high school teachers and students were in for a special treat.

“How Your Brain Works” Now Speaks Serbian Too

After Spanish and Italian editions, our book “How Your Brain Works” (MIT Press, 2022) got its first expanded edition. The good news is, there are several more experiments that we worked on with our fellows since the 2023 Summer Research Fellowship. The bad news, the book is in Serbian, so the new experiments aren’t available to our US audience for the time being! We hereby extend our gratitude to Nordeus Foundation, Center for Promotion of Science and the US Embassy in Serbia, who have made it all possible.

But the book launch, several workshops and media appearances weren’t the only way we popularized neuroscience in Serbia. We also donated neuroscience combos (the book + Neuron SpikerBox Pro + Human SpikerBoxO) to 23 schools around the country. These schools are now joining the ranks with a couple Serbian universities, two primary schools and a grammar school that have already received our gear over the past years. It will translate to thousands of students getting a chance to do hands-on neuroscience in the classroom!

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More BYB Neuroscience at Brain Awareness Week 2024

5 Brain Awareness Week Ideas (Apply Now to Get up to $1,250 in Grants!)

— Written by Jelena Ciric —

Second week of March is always a special time of year for brain buffs. That is when educators from around the world join in for neuroscience outreach in schools and local communities!

Money’s always scarce, but your organization doesn’t have to tap into its own funds. If you write up and submit a proposal within the next couple of weeks (through October 31), you may get up to $1,250 to fund your Brain Awareness Week (BAW) activities for next March. This year, the IBRO/Dana Foundation Grants Program was expanded by 60%, so your chances of winning are bigger than ever!

But where to begin? You don’t need to break your head over activity ideas. We have a lot of wildly popular, effective and customizable hands-on experiments that have already made many an appearance during previous BAWs. Or, if you prefer something new, you can always scour our blog for inspiration from our fellows and interns! All of our experiments were designed to be conducted in makeshift labs, classrooms or public spaces. Being attractive and appealing whether you’re reaching out to middle-schoolers, college students or the general public, they all stand for democratization of neuroscience.

But what if you can’t make the second week of March? No worries. You’re not in any way required to stick with the exact BAW dates (March 11-17, 2024), nor will it affect your chances of getting awarded. Do it whenever you want, as long as you use the official Brain Awareness Week branding.

5 Brain Awareness Week BYB Classics

The foremost reason why these experiments strike a chord with so many people is that they break down very complex and sophisticated concepts in a way that looks and feels lo-fi enough not to intimidate anyone. Being featured on TED doesn’t do them a disservice either!

Another reason why we chose them is that they don’t take a lot of time or equipment.

1. BAW All-Time Favorite: Human-Human Interface

What does it take to achieve control over another person’s arm so that it moves because you wanted it to move? In its essence, this is an experiment in advanced neuroprosthetics that’s cooked up for audiences as young as 5th grade!

A favorite activity to do with our community during #BrainAwarenessWeek is from @BackyardBrains. We (and the kids!) especially love setting up elementary school principals and teachers to demonstrate the human-human interface: https://t.co/HTgIWpyq5D #neuroscience @NGPMichigan pic.twitter.com/QJL8VTQDsm

— Michigan Neuroscience Institute (MNI) ? (@UM_MNI) March 16, 2022