BrainStorm Neuroscience Pitch Competition awards $60,000 funding
San Antonio’s Mind Science Foundation awarded research funding to three internationally-renowned neuroscience research groups with the help of 300 of their members. The event was held on October 2, 2018, at the Pearl Stable in the historic Pearl Brewery.
The research teams traveled to San Antonio from Chicago, Baltimore and the United Kingdom, to present their innovative research ideas on exploring the nature of human consciousness in a pitch competition in front of an audience of the Foundation’s members.
Audience members cast their votes, and while the results were tabulated, master illusionist Mark Mitton entertained the enthusiastic crowd with feats of magic and sleight of hand.
Top prize of $30,000 went to Subbulakshmi Sankarasubramanian from Dr. Michael Anderson’s lab at the University of Cambridge. Their work explores techniques to suppress traumatic memories that cause emotional pain.
Dr. David Linden and Dr. Julia Brill (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine) received a $15,000 award for their work on examining how cold temperatures protect the brain in oxygen-deprived conditions, like cold-water drownings or cardiac surgeries that necessitate stopping the heart. Dr. Ken Paller and Karen Konkoly (Northwestern University) received a $15,000 award for his lab’s efforts to establish real-time, two-way communication with lucid dreamers.
The next round of the BrainStorm competition will solicit research proposals in early 2019 for the second annual pitch competition on Tuesday, October 15, 2019.
