The 11th BioCamp concludes with an award ceremony for the best students

The main theme of this year's BioCamp, which, like last year, took place in a virtual environment, was the impact of data and artificial intelligence on the pharmaceutical industry. Young talents learned about the opportunities and challenges that digitization, automation and AI bring to the industry and discussed new ways of working and thinking to find breakthrough pharmaceutical solutions with top experts. An important part of the event was the workshop on future competences, led by Dr. Anja Svetina Nabergoj from Stanford University, where they worked in groups and with mentors to identify which competences are and will be the ones that drive the pharmaceutical industry in the future, how each employee can contribute to the success of the company, and what we can learn from our colleagues and peers.

Students compete to find a concrete  solution 

As has been typical of BioCamp for many years, the event also presented participants with a practical challenge based on a real-life situation in the pharmaceutical industry – this year, they had to focus their knowledge and creative thinking to come up with innovative solutions to address the pharmaceutical industry's challenges in tackling sickle cell anemia. The task required students to work in teams to develop their business and scientific mindsets, and to demonstrate a high degree of innovation, communication and other teamwork skills. Working in a virtual environment provided an additional challenge, but the students worked even harder to present innovative and creative solutions. Katja Razinger, director of sales operations at Novartis in Slovenia, has participated in board of investors several times and emphasized that students show more innovation and quality of their work every year. »This year’s presentations were exceptional and we really had a hard time deciding on the best team. The students expressed not only the ability of team cooperation within groups, but also between individual groups, which brought even better solutions to the challenge, which was quite demanding. They have proven themselves by thinking outside the box as well as incorporating modern technologies, but mainly, they focused on one thing that Novartis is emphasized at every step – the patient.« In addition to the winning team, three individual prizes were awarded at the event – for the most effective use of social media and for the most outstanding participant, while the students voted for the best participant among themselves as well.

After the event, the winners said:

Victor Dupuy  from the winning team: »It’s hard to believe that we win this, as during the preparation of case study, we faced many challenges. But we worked really hard,  put all our efforts in and got some really precious advices from other teams  and mentors and that was our winning combination. «

Angelika Vižintin for outstanding engagement and participation: »I’m really thankful that this event took place and that organizer made an effort to put it together online. You did a great job and this was seen throughout whole event. What I liked the most was interaction of students from different background and level of knowledge – we were all actively discussing the topics of the event and learned really a lot.«

Luka Svet for peer-to-peer recognition: I’m really surprised by this award; I would really like to thank all the members of my team and I think we all should share this award. When preparing a case study, it was all about team work and that is what really matters. I hope that one day, we’ll all meet in person and share this experience live. 

Kristijan Topalov from North Macedonia for outstanding engagement and activity on social media platforms: »Thank you for this award, it’s a great feeling to get this award. I think it’s really important to share the message of BioCamp on social media, so more people, especially students have s chance to know a little about the content and also to raise awareness about health issues, that we tackled. «