FUSION RESEARCH CHALLENGE

The Challenge was founded by The Harvard Brain to encourage young scholars to join the conversation and advance our understanding of the brain through interdisciplinary inquiry.

The Challenge asks students to write a 1,000-word narrative review paper grounded in academic research that provides one answer to the question: How can intersecting ideas from different academic disciplines improve our understanding of the brain?

Narrative reviews may discuss interdisciplinary areas of studies that are actively being researched or propose new interdisciplinary approaches across the loosely defined field of brain sciences. The prompt is intended to be interpreted very broadly; prospective entrants should not be very concerned about whether their paper idea qualifies. Entrants are especially encouraged to put ideas from the humanities and the sciences into conversation.

Example narrative review ideas include but are certainly not limited to: application of a philosophical theory towards the ethics of brain-computer interaction, approaches for computer science to further the field of linguistics, analysis of how journalism and literature influence society’s attitudes towards brain technologies, application of evolutionary biology experiment strategies to address reproducibility challenges in psychology research, and proposal for how qualitative psychology methods can be applied to develop more humanistic computer science.

The Spring 2026 Challenge will be judged by Dr. Eve Valera, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Valera uses a range of methodologies to understand the effects of brain injuries (from blunt force trauma as well as strangulation-related asphyxiation, "Concussion+") in women who have experienced intimate partner violence. As a pioneer in the field for over 25 years, Dr. Valera's work has provided much of the minimal data linking partner inflicted brain injuries to negative cognitive, psychological and neural outcomes.

The top three winning entries will be published in the Spring 2026 issue of The Harvard Brain alongside research from affiliates of Harvard University.

The deadline to submit to the Spring 2026 Challenge is April 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST. (Not ready to submit yet? Sign up for email reminders before the deadline here.)

Submit here.

History of the Challenge

Neurological and psychiatric illnesses often result in fundamental alterations in patients’ experience of core aspects of being human, such as memory and mood. To treat these patients in a humanistic manner, it is important to incorporate perspectives from numerous fields across both the humanities and the sciences.

The mission of The Harvard Brain is to promote conversation between different academic perspectives that examine human behavior and mental life, including those originating from the seven diverse fields that make up the Harvard MBB Interfaculty Initiative: Computer Science, History and Science, Human Evolutionary Biology, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology.

The Challenge was founded by The Harvard Brain to encourage young scholars to join this conversation and advance our understanding of the brain through interdisciplinary inquiry. The Challenge receives hundreds of entries from students in over a dozen nations every semester and has an acceptance rate <2%.

Entering the Challenge

The Challenge runs twice a year with a deadline in December and a deadline in April. The logistics of the challenge are described below.

Participants should draft their narrative review paper formatted based upon the APA Style Guide (7th edition) with a strict word limit of 1,000; an abstract is not necessary. (Click here for further information on what a narrative review paper is.) For examples of well-written papers, please read The Harvard Brain​'s past issues. Importantly, the narrative review paper should cite articles in peer-reviewed journals upon which the paper bases its claims. JSTOR, PubMed, and Google Scholar represent excellent resources to locate peer-reviewed articles to cite. All entries must be written in English.

All review papers must be submitted here prior to April 13, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST, with no exceptions granted.

Entry Fee: A $10 entry fee is required upon submission; participants who submit multiple entries will need to pay an entry fee for every submitted entry. The Harvard Brain does not retain any entry fees; all entry fees will be directly submitted as a donation to an organization that provides underserved communities with mental health resources.

Following the Challenge deadline, judges will anonymously review all submissions. The Harvard Brain will notify all entrants of winners in June. The Spring 2026 issue, including the three Challenge Winners’ papers, will be published on the website in June 2026.