Introduction

It was during a symposium about genomics in 2003, when we, myself (Patricia) and the communications advisor of our scientific centre, suddenly got the idea. One of those eureka moments when you know you are on to something special, it rings all the bells and the more you think about it, the more potential you see in the idea. We were working on a communication plan for a private–public partnership on industrial genomics and were wondering how we could engage people with genomics. We wanted to create a positive association in people's minds and avoid the rather negative connotations that ‘biotechnology’ had received. The idea for the project got us really enthusiastic. By involving scientists working with high-school students on investigations for application in developing countries, it would provide positive associations with the life sciences for a large public and the media, have the potential to interest school students in studies in the life sciences and, at the same time, be contributing to needy situations in developing countries. The idea was presented to the 300 scientists at the conference and it hit all the right buttons. The overall working concept finally grew into a full-blown annual competition and a legal foundation was established in 2005 to run it professionally.

I remember standing in a bus in Amsterdam thinking of a name for the competition. ‘Imagine’ in recollection of John Lennon's verses came up and in our enthusiasm we tested it with some of the bus passengers. They liked it. So ‘Imagine Life Sciences’ it became. The idea is simple. Scientists are asked to provide an idea for what one can do with life sciences in a developing country. These ideas are collected and sent to secondary-school students who are asked to make a business plan of the original idea. In the Dutch secondary (pre-university level) school curriculum students are required to undertake an assignment of approximately 80 hours called the Profielwerkstuk (assignment related to the mainstream curriculum track). They need to work independently on a subject of their own choice and often they work in small groups of two to six students on the same subject, dividing the work. They have around four months to complete it during the final year of their high-school curriculum. The Imagine competition can therefore be easily incorporated into the standard curriculum.