In May, the project of Harvard Law student Esin Gumustekin ’26, the Brain Exercise Initiative, was one of the winners in this year’s Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge, an annual competition for Harvard students and select alumni and affiliates. Gumustekin’s initiative received a $25,000 award, the second-place prize in the student social impact track.
Gumustekin — who in addition to her J.D. at Harvard Law School, is pursuing a M.D. at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine — started the initiative, a student-run nonprofit organization, with the aim of improving cognitive function and memory in patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. She was moved to do so in part by her beloved grandmother, who, as her disease progressed, no longer recognized her children or grandchildren.
Drawing on research that has shown that working on math problems, reading aloud, and writing can improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, the project pairs college students with seniors living at retirement homes to conduct these daily brain exercise sessions.
During the May 7 awards ceremony at Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall, President’s Innovation Challenge finalists pitched their ventures to a global audience of more than 2,000 in-person and virtual attendees. In her one-minute presentation, Gumustekin described the Brain Exercise Initiative’s cognitive and social benefits. “Not only do we conduct these sessions, but we create an avenue for intergenerational connection. We aim to combat the loneliness and isolation that many individuals living in retirement homes face,” she said.
When Gumustekin founded the Brain Exercise Initiative, she was volunteering at a retirement home in Los Angeles. Today, there are over 80 chapters of the initiative in the U.S. and Canada with more than 1300 volunteers. “It is our goal that every individual dealing with cognitive decline will have the support and friendship of the Brain Exercise Initiative volunteer,” she said.
The annual President’s Innovation Challenge, first launched in 2011, is a competition designed to bring together student and alumni innovators from all 13 Harvard schools to work on compelling solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Winners received a share of $517,000 in non-dilutive funding, made possible by a gift from the Bertarelli Foundation, co-founded by Ernesto Bertarelli, M.B.A. ’93.
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