The Heart Expedition is an international Comenius project for secondary education students focused on extending their knowledge of scientific and medical research in leading European research institutions.
The project ran in the years 2012 through 2014 and involved students from Belgium, France, Germany, Slovakia and Sweden.
Project activities include:
These are the Slovak participants of the project.
The trip to Slovakia for majority of the participating students took place in October 2013. Students visited various interesting places including the towns of Prešov, Košice and Bardejov or the High Tatras mountains.
You can find some of the photographs from the trip on this external link: Google Drive.
The Odyssey was the main part of the project and took place in March and April 2014 in various parts of Europe. Over the course of one week, the project allowed us to attend several interesting activities related to research in the field of physics and biology.
The expedition started in the West Belgian city of Bruges with the presentations of students from several countries involved in the project. We saw, for example, a working model of heart constructed by Belgian students or projects about various heart diseases and the methods of their diagnosis.
We then travelled to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwziekenhuis (OLV) in the Belgian city of Aalst, where we took part in another Biology-centered presentations by both students and the professional staff of the hospital. We also witnessed two heart operations that we watched live by the means of video transmission.
The next day, we went to Heidelberg, Germany, where we visited the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and attended a lecture about the work of this organization as well as a discussion with three institute staff members about their experience with working in a scientific environment.
We also visited Strasbourg, where we attended a visit of the Palace of Europe, the seat of the Council of Europe. The scientific theme of the project was thus replaced by a view of the topic of human rights.
Our expedition had its conclusion in the Swiss city of Geneva and the nearby headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). We watched the remaining student presentations and attended a visit of the most significant physics experiment of this organization, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), during which we attended a lecture on the scientific principles that this experiment applies and then were offered a close look at one of the particle detectors of the collider, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS).
This expedition provided us with a large amount of information from the field of both physics and biology and led us to many places related to research and work in these areas of science that had previously been unknown to us. It thus substantially expanded our competences and our interest in studying and working in these fields.
You can find some of the photographs from this trip on the following links: