Submitted Abstract
The Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) is a public biomedical research institute specialised in population health, oncology and immunology. The institute also includes a biobank – the Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg (IBBL). LIH has gained reputation in the scientific and medical community in Luxembourg and abroad but still needs to create awareness on its brand and research focuses among the national broader public.The challenge is double: find a way to grab people’s attention and give visibility to LIH and its activities, and allow non-scientific target groups to understand complex and sometimes very technical scientific topics.To do that, LIH intends to organise an original real-life experience game based on a scenario allowing participants to put themselves in the shoes of scientists. The game will be organised as a quest, during which teams of maximum 6 participants will have to carry out a research project on lung cancer started by a team of researchers that mysteriously disappeared. This quest will take over famous real life game codes (e.g. escape games, adventure games) and will include 9 fun challenges (cerebral and physical) featuring stunning experiences (e.g. virtual reality game). Each challenge will illustrate scientific concepts in a playful way. The whole event will also be an opportunity to raise awareness on the reality of the research world (e.g. job profiles, funding).The event will be organised in February 2018, during 3 days including a weekend (proposed dates: 23,24,25/02/18). The first day will target school classes with pupils aged 10 and more; the other two days will be open to the wider public (adults and children from 7 years on with adult supervision).A communication plan including digital and print communication will ensure efficient nationwide advertisement of the event. We expect to gather around 75 teams of 6 people (450 participants in total). This communication plan will also make it possible to gain awareness among non participating audiences, and to maximize the event’s output for LIH and its partners. This project would be the first of its kind in Luxembourg. Through this unique and fun concept and the original tools that will be used, LIH intends to bring to the wider public a fresh perspective on biomedical research. To discover the concept in a short animated video : http://bit.ly/LIHScienceQuest