Mary Gates Endowment for Students

Richard Li

Project

Grey Matters: Reshaping Public Accessibility of Neuroscience with Content Creation

This project will alleviate neuroscience education barrier through video storytelling. By mentoring students in production, refining accessibility tools, and collaborating with professionals, it will build a sustainable platform where science communication becomes creative, inclusive, and relatable. It allows anyone, regardless of background, to experience neuroscience as an open, engaging conversation.

What I learned

I began this project thinking mostly about the work itself: how to make neuroscience content clearer, more engaging, and easier for students to create together. Over time, I became more attentive to what happened around the work. I learned how much a team depends on clear expectations, patient mentorship, and enough trust for people to develop their own judgment. The application process helped me see the project in that broader frame. What mattered most was not simply what we produced, but whether I had helped build something that other students could contribute to and eventually carry forward.

Advice for future applicants

Begin with the work you already care about and ask what you genuinely want to understand, improve, or build through it. The strongest parts of my application came from being specific about the problems I had encountered and honest about what I was still learning. It also helped me to think beyond the final product and consider how the project might shape the people involved, including myself. I found that the application became much easier once I stopped trying to describe an impressive project and instead focused on explaining why the work mattered to me and what I hoped to learn from pursuing it.

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