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 diversity and excellence in research from our Summer 2020 term. Now we're proudly launching the second volume of our journal, with students from 34 countries, from our own zip code in New Jersey, to as far away as Romania, India, Bangladesh, and China. Together with researches from 9 universities, they worked 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.

Out of more than 3,000 of applicants, 493 students were accepted and enrolled into the program, from summer 2020 through summer 2021. These students worked either individually or in small groups with researchers, with the goal of producing an impactful research project. 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. Of these students, 28 were selected to publish their work in this issue. Despite being written by high school students, these papers display a level of thoughtfulness, analytical rigor, and ambition more typical of undergraduate students. 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.