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Notion of an 'Open-Source' Database Awarded 1st Prize
At the MVA 10-year Jubilee, three high school students from Medicon Valley were rewarded for their visions of the future life science sector in Medicon Valley. Milena Laban from Sorø Akademis Skole carried off the 1st prize for her inspiring, open-minded and innovative thinking.
"Through sharing all information within Medicon Valley, the cluster is able to compete, and is virtually unbeatable by outside companies. In Medicon Valley we do not discover the gravity or invent the soup plate twice".
This is how Milena Laban, high school student from Sorø Akademis Skole (Denmark), begins her winning contribution of the Medicon Valley Essay Competition. She envisages a world-class Medicon Valley by 2017 particularly because of what she calls the ‘open source' database.
- This summer I talked to some people about the OpenSource community. Even though the chat was IT-related, it inspired me to apply the notion of knowledge-sharing to the life science sector, says Milena Laban.
The jury from Active Biotech, Ideon and MVA was impressed by Milena's inspiring ideas on integration, knowledge-sharing and general knowledge of the pharmaceutical and biotech sector, as well as her written English.
Personalised Medicine in Medicon Valley
A second student from Sorø Akademis Skole, Simone Fløcke Lorenzen, made it to the final. She wrote an essay about a rapidly growing company, NovoCardio, that provides an entirely new self-diagnosis and self-treatment approach for coronary thromboses patients thanks to a newly discovered enzyme called Cardirin.
The idea was inspired by her experiences on the Medicon Valley Life Science tour as well as conversations with her father, who is a doctor. Simone describes how one drop of blood is enough to tell the patient whether there is myocardial infarction.
- The notion of self-diagnosis and self-treatment is an extremely relevant future scenario and it is supported by an impressive body of technical knowledge, says Tove Østergaard, Project Manager at MVA and a jury member.
Ideon Science Park Transformed into Science City
Simone shared the 2nd prize with Sara Schmidt from S:t Petri Skola (Malmo, Sweden). Like Simone, Sara wrote about personalised medicine and took an alternative view, depicting how Ideon in 2017 has developed into a science city encompassing a MedIdeon Hospital, an Ideon Star Hotel and a Medshop Mall.
- The Medicon Valley vision movie and the Medicon Valley Life Science Tour greatly inspired me. I was very motivated, and right from the beginning of the tour I noted down my ideas, says Sara Schmidt.
The Future is Within Medicon Valley
The top three contributions were all of high quality, and are very interesting visions of the region 10 years from now. Milena, Simone and Sara will most probably be employed within life science in Medicon Valley.
- Before this I didn't see myself working in Medicon Valley, but the tour and the competition have left me with a firm belief that I will work in research and development in the future, and very likely here in Medicon Valley, says Simone Fløcke Lorenzen.
The Life Science Tour & Competition to be Repeated Next Year
The competition was part of the Medicon Valley Life Science Tour, which strives to attract talent and generate interest among life science among high school students. MVA thanks all of the 50 high school students for their participation and their creative and inspiring essay contributions. Given the success of the life science tour, it will probably be repeated in 2008.
