July 8, 2024

The Global Center for Legal Innovation on Food Environments is pleased to announce the winner and runner-up of the third edition of its Student Writing Competition. The competition challenged law students from Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago to address how the law can be used to promote healthier lives by discouraging the consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages. 

Following a call for submissions, we received outstanding entries. Our judges were faced with the challenge of selecting a winner and a runner-up.

Winner

Marcus Bustamante Headshot

Marcus Bustamante was selected as this year’s winner with his paper titled, “Brazilian Regulation on Marketing Food for Children.” 

Bustamante is an undergraduate law student at the University of São Paulo. He is currently engaged in a one-year academic research project about the Brazilian regulatory data protection system and its effects on access to healthcare and medication, under the guidance of Professors Juliana Krueger and Marislei Nishijima. 

Bustamante has also been selected as the winner of the first Interfarma Award on Research and Innovation, an academic writing competition that challenged Brazilian undergraduate and postgraduate students to address how innovation can be fostered through the intellectual property system.

As the winner of the competition, Bustamante will be joining the O’Neill Institute as an intern in 2025.

Runner-up

Giovanna Camargo Messner Neves Headshot

Giovanna Camargo Messner Neves was selected as the first runner-up with the paper, “Public Policies and the Role of Public Authorities in Child Nutrition in Brazil: School as a Tool for Building Autonomy.” Neves is an undergraduate law student at FGV Rio de Janeiro Law School and formerly interned at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.