This event, which was one of the first in the last 18 months to welcome back in-person participants as well as those online, had one question at its core: what do we need to know about digital health and patient-centred medicine?

"Art and science investigate the same fundamental questions - why are we here and how the world works. They also share the same basic approach - creative exploration. It is not surprising then that the benefits of the interactions between science and art are becoming increasingly more recognised", says Julia Salaroli, a professional dancer and choreographer who co-coordinates Bridges to the unknown - Crossing Art with Science with neuroscientist Patrícia Correia.

This center - resulting from a partnership between the Champalimaud Foundation and the Mauricio and Charlotte Botton couple, who contributed with 50 million euros to its construction - is the first in the world simultaneously dedicated to the research and treatment of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest types of cancer.

The kids appeared on the screen one square at a time. In the beginning, almost all the squares were black, excluding the ones of the teachers, who welcomed each new arrival alternating between "good morning" and "bom dia". First meetings are always a bit awkward, especially over zoom, but then, as soon as Danbee Kim, a former doctoral student at Champalimaud Foundation and one of the creators of Neuronautas, asked everyone to turn their cameras on, the screen suddenly lit up with the faces of the 2021 Class. 

Monday, 9 a.m.. A small group of basic science researchers from the Champalimaud Foundation and other people working at the Foundation who are interested in bridging the gap between science and medicine is scheduled for a “medical class” via Zoom (due to pandemic restrictions) with Pedro Marvão, their tutor in a new course called Fundamentals of Medicine. In one week, they will have to “solve”, together, a clinical case. They will do this, week after week, with a series of other cases. 

Eugenia Chiappe, Principal Investigator of the Sensorimotor Integration Research Group at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal is standing in her office. There is a door, maybe three metres away, and the floor is flat and clear. Eugenia, who intends to walk in a straight line to the door, takes a second to measure the distance and the terrain. She closes her eyes, walks four steps forward, and bumps into a chair to her right.