Henrique Peixoto Godoi

Henrique was inspired to begin the journey toward becoming a scientist when he was 11 years old and saw a film showing the first separation of Siamese twins in history. This led him to feel a sense of moral responsibility to make the world a better place. Over the years his appetite for knowledge (and neuroscience in particular) has grown, leading him to become a Young Scientist team leader of the New York Academy of Sciences – conducting experiments with local universities, interviewing experts, and writing papers. 

Throughout his years in high school, Henrique has published articles including “Lost Memory, Alzheimer’s disease and how it relates to neuroplasticity, genetics and biochemistry”, which appeared in the Journal of Student Research, an international academic research journal indexed in scholarly databases such as Google Scholar, Altmetric, Scinapse, Crossref and LOCKSS. He was also a co-author of the article “Early deficit in child cognitive development associated with CAPD”, a case study which appeared as a chapter in the most influential book about neurodiversity in the country. Reading The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge and discovering the work of Dr Michael Merzenich (a plastic neurosurgeon) inspired Henrique to create a social startup called Instituto Merzenich, which aims to provide good educational opportunities for neuroatypical people and democratize access to neuroscience nationwide. This has so far impacted people in Brazil and around the world, and has led to meetings with congresspeople, interviews with a national newspaper, and conversations with Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG). 

Henrique’s ability has been recognized with medals in prominent competitions such as state champion in the Brazilian Olympiad of Neuroscience, the gold medal in the International Olympiad of Mathematics and Research, third-best geography student in Brazil (out of 26,000 entrants), and a bronze medal in the Brazilian Olympiad of Financial Education (a four-phase competition for young investors). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Henrique also became interested in the Model United Nations, and since then he has been named Best Delegate at DiploMUN (the biggest Model UN in Latin America), Outstanding Delegate at DegloMUN (the ninth-biggest Model UN in the world), and fifth-best Brazilian competitive debater in 2021.  

If he wins the Global Student Prize, Henrique will use the funds to transform the Instituto Merzenich from an online startup into a company with a physical location. This would involve constructing a building where administrators can meet to discuss research, upgrading the organization’s IT infrastructure to serve more users, and launching a competition prize to stimulate more scientific thinking in the country.