The connectedness of today’s world enables us to unlock the boundless potential of human ingenuity. It is in this spirit that The Horizon Academic Research Program connects talented high school students from all over the world with professional researchers to work on meaningful academic research. The Horizon Academic Research Journal showcases the selected high quality work produced by high school students in the The Horizon Academic Research Program. This journal issue represents only a fraction of the diversity and excellence of our students from the past year. Students from over 25 countries, representing languages and traditions from Vietnam, Qatar, Gambia, Austria, India, Turkey, Canada, the United States, China, South Korea, and more, worked with researchers from among the world’s foremost universities to produce scholarship on topics ranging from Bioinformatics to International Relations. By conducting the program online, we were able to cross physical boundaries that would have otherwise made such work impossible, and connected curious minds that likewise never could have found one another.

So far in 2023, nearly 5000 students have applied to join the Horizon Academic Research Program. Of these applications, only 21 students’ research interests are represented in this edition of our journal, a figure representing less than half of 1% of our total applications. Some students produced original research, while others filled gaps in the current literature using knowledge gained over the course of their time at Horizon Academic. Despite being written by high school students, these papers display a level of thoughtfulness, analytical rigor, and ambition more typical of undergraduates. Some papers are approachable introductions to fields that are difficult for the average person to access, while others cause us to question our understanding of ideas with which we may think we are familiar.

We are pleased to make this volume available to the public and hope that this provides a window, not only into the skill and ability of each author, but also into the abilities of high school students to do meaningful research without the use of physical lab spaces. It is our pleasure and honor to share this work with you.

The embedded viewer below allows you to browse the entire journal volume, and you may also access the journal through our pre-print server here.