A $100,000 challenge prize for the first team to verifiably preserve an entire brain's connectome for long-term storage. Issued in 2010 — and won in full by 2018.
The Brain Preservation Foundation offered a cash prize for the first individual or team to rigorously demonstrate a surgical technique capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term (>100 years) storage — with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remained intact and traceable using today's electron-microscopic imaging techniques.
The competition was structured in two stages:
The first group to complete Stage 1 won a quarter of the total purse; the first to complete Stage 2 won the remainder.
Submissions were evaluated by the BPF's judging committee through extensive 3D electron microscopy and detailed structural assessment, against the published prize criteria. The judging was led by two neuroscientists:
Co-founder of the Brain Preservation Foundation and a neuroscientist specialising in connectomics and high-throughput electron microscopy. His research focuses on the technologies needed to map and preserve the brain's synaptic wiring.
A leading connectomics researcher and author of Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. His laboratory develops methods for reconstructing neural circuits from electron-microscopy data at scale.
To protect the integrity of the competition and the Foundation's charitable status, BPF Directors, Officers, Judges, and Advisors could not be contestants; anyone wishing to compete had to resign such positions first. All others with access to legitimate research-laboratory facilities were encouraged to apply.
Two world-class research teams entered: 21st Century Medicine (21CM) in California, and the laboratory of Shawn Mikula at the Max Planck Institute. Their submissions are documented on our evaluation pages: