A brief history: In 2002 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC), located in Los Angeles, California, USA established the International Research and Innovation in Medicine (IRIM) Program. In 2006 CSMC organized the Regional Cooperation for Health, Science and Technology (RECOOP HST) Consortium that comprised eleven universities from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and academic organizations from seven countries. By 2011 there were twenty universities in the RECOOP HST Consortium and they decided to convert the Consortium into a research association and form the Regional Cooperation for Health, Science and Technology (RECOOP HST) Association.
The RECOOP HST Association announced the first annual Art and Sciences Competition in 2016. Arts and sciences shape culture, and culture shapes how individuals judge the world. Arts and sciences are sometimes described as separate human activities, mismatched and contradicting each other. From our point of view, however, art and science are not so disparate. They both require careful observation, intuition, inspiration, passion, dedication, and discipline, and both can inspire each other. In art and science, the most essential thing is to create something genuine based on the free association of thoughts. While science has to be more guided toward a well-defined goal summarized in the hypothesis, art is more spontaneous, logically unconstrained and uses an undirected association of ideas, emotions, and feelings.
The main goal of the RECOOP Annual Art and Sciences Competition is to initiate a creative working relationship between RECOOP young scientists and artists to create artworks from life science and medical images and communicate the beauty of living organisms.