Published: 11-11-2021 12:09 | Updated: 11-11-2021 12:10

The interdisciplinary collaboration was key to the solution in this year's Skillbridge Student Case Challenge

Four students are standing on the stage smiling towards the camera
The winning team in 2021's Student Skillbridge Challenge. Ala Abdallah (KI), David Borer (KTH), Lisa Broman (Bergs), Kavya Shukla (SSE) Photo: Private

This year's Skillbridge Student Case Challenge was decided in early October and in the winning team, Team Delta, was KI student Ala Abdallah.

Skillbridge Student Case Challenge is a competition where students from Berghs School of Communication, Karolinska Institutet, the Royal Institute of Technology, and the Stockholm School of Economics work together to tackle a challenging case where they solve actual challenges from companies. In each team, there is at least one student represented from each school, Berghs, KI, KTH, and the Stockholm School of Economics to develop collaborations between the interdisciplinary disciplines: communication, economy, engineering, and medicine.

This year's case challenge was presented by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and touched on the topic of public-private partnerships. The challenge was about precision medicine and the challenges that make the usage lag despite its benefits. The teams were to find a solution on how different institutions in Sweden can work together to facilitate the availability and entry of precision medicine into the Swedish health system.

Ala Abdallah is an international student at Karolinska Institutet coming from Jordan. She is studying the master's program in bio-entrepreneurship and was one of the participants in Team Delta, the winning team.

– When Pfizer’s country manager Marcus Stjernström, announced the results and we team Delta won the competition, I felt so grateful for the amazing team I was part of in this competition. We had different academic backgrounds and experiences, but together we were able to cover every aspect of this challenge and manage to have the winning solution, says Ala.