Career prospects

The programme will shape you into a scientist skilled in performing research with a technological and regenerative medicine character. All basic and advanced skills you will master during the two-year programme will equip you to become an interesting and attractive candidate for potential employers. You may meet these employers during your Master’s programme.

The planning of the programme is tailored to the individual. The choices that are made during planning can be based on your personal career focus. The most popular choice is to become a scientist in tissue or organ regeneration. In this case, you can choose to perform a research internship in your research profile.

You can choose between various research and science profiles, such as a general research profile, applied data science, communication, education or management.

Possible prospects

Depending on your personal interests and skills, you can shape your career yourself. If you already know which would be your ideal career, you can discuss with the programme coordinator how best to prepare for your specific career path.

Research projects

During your research projects, you will be exposed to potential employers. Your supervisor as well as other lab and group members (who may be able to offer you a future position) will notice you during a project. These supervisors may be in academia, but might also work in industry. In addition, you may meet potential employers during workshops, symposia, or seminars. The student association Mebiose also organises meetings dedicated to career opportunities and prospects.

In consultation with the Programme Coordinator, you can focus your programme on obtaining all the skills required for a certain career path.

In addition to individual guidance, group based career orientation is available in the project ‘Navigation towards personal excellence’. This starts with information about profiles, valorisation, and speed dates with alumni during the mandatory Graduate School of Life Sciences (GS-LS) general course at the start of all Master’s programmes and continues during three workshops and reflection days within the Master’s programme spread over the two years. ‘Career lunches’ with our own life sciences researchers within the GS-LS offer a personal view on someone’s career path. On top of this, you can use your electives for several related course on career orientation. All these activities will be embedded in the newly developed careers centre.

Academic and professional knowledge and skills

You will be trained to independently:

• conduct a literature review;
• design a study that is suitable to answer research questions in the field of regenerative medicine and technology;
• carry out research in your specific field(s) of training (e.g. synthesising biomaterials, isolating and culturing stem cells, creating and culturing engineered tissues);
• analyse, process, and interpret experimental data; 
• write a report or article on your study results.

Further, you will be able to:

• describe the development and pathology of specialised tissues and appreciate the rationale for regenerative medicine strategies;
• understand and apply cell engineering techniques and (environmental) signaling to improve cellular behavior in regenerative medicine;
• describe and distinguish between different in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo research models and techniques and determine which models/techniques can be used to answer a specific research or clinical diagnostic question;
• think of a strategy from bench-to-bed to answer a specific research question;
• describe the ethical considerations your research is facing; 
• effectively communicate and function in multidisciplinary groups and interact with people from varying backgrounds.

Academic Careers

If you choose to pursue an academic career, a logical step will be to start a PhD project after you obtain your Master’s degree. Our research projects during RMT will prepare you for science in the lab, but you will also be equipped to perform more translational research. After obtaining a PhD degree, you can choose to continue in academia or to continue your career elsewhere. Continuing in academia consists of doing post-doc work and becoming an assistant, associate, or full professor.

Professional careers

The most popular career choices of RMT alumni are listed below:

• PhD student in the RM PhD programme in Utrecht: several alumni are currently pursuing a PhD degree in Utrecht in the field of Regenerative Medicine.
• PhD student elsewhere: several alumni are following a PhD trajectory in their country of origin, in the lab that hosted them during the minor research project, or in yet another lab in the Netherlands or abroad.
• At various biomedical companies: as a product expert, clinical trial assistant, junior scientist, trainee or associate consultant.