By Casey Neill
A Keysborough student won a global award for his video about the brain.
Haileybury Year 7 student Anirudh Kathirvel put his own mind to good use in his five-minute submission to this year’s Brain Awareness Video Contest.
Leading neuroscientists included Anirudh’s explanation of optical phenomenon binocular rivalry in their top 10 shortlist.
Online voters then awarded him the People’s Choice Award.
“This win reiterates to me the fact that anything we do or want to do with passion combined with hard work will always show result,” he said.
“I truly believe this. My passion for neuroscience has taken me this far, and I can’t wait for my dreams to come true.”
The Society of Neuroscience runs the global competition that encourages participants to submit a short YouTube video explaining a neuroscience concept in a simple and imaginative way.
“The brain is the most complex and fascinating and yet most challenging to the researchers,” Anirudh said.
“The more we know about it, the less we understand.
“When you are learning about brain, you never get bored and learning continues.”
He’ll receive his award at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Conference in Washington, USA, next month.
Anirudh is no stranger to success. The Journal spoke with him following his win on The Great Australian Spelling Bee in 2015.
The nine-year-old had trumped 3000 applicants to win the contest, taking home a $50,000 education scholarship and $10,000 worth of goods for his school.
He started reading at age two.
“He wasn’t even talking,” mum Sujatha said.
“At his child care during reading time, he used to read instead of the teacher.”
Anirudh was completing an online neuroscience course run by Harvard University at the time and said he had a neuroscience career in his sights.
“People say that the brain is the most complex organism in the whole universe that we know of,” he said.
“So my curiosity is driving that, and I also want to help people because there are neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease that devastate people’s lives.
“I just want to help them.”
Watch Anirudh’s award-winning video.
 
