Extra opportunities

Utrecht Summer School offers a broad selection of over 200 academic courses in virtually all disciplines. If you are interested in a Master’s programme of the Graduate School of Life Sciences, taking a summer course is a great opportunity to familiarise yourself with the educational opportunities in Utrecht and get a first introduction to the topic and the latest developments in research.The Utrecht Summer School course ‘3D Printing and Biofabrication’ will provide you insights in opportunities of additive manufacturing technologies and 3D (bio)printing in biomedical applications. Read more.

U/Select (Utrecht Selective Life Sciences Extracurricular Track) is the Life Sciences Honours Programme for selected students of the Graduate School of Life Sciences. It is a two-year extracurricular programme for excellent students who seek to broaden their horizon and who want to get more out of their Master’s programme.

The goals of U/Select are:

• to broaden and deepen your study programme in extra and special learning experiences;
• to be part of a community of excellent students in life sciences;
• to be able to write a research proposal and execute this during your minor research abroad;
• to have a better start position for the next step in your (study) career;
• to build your network beyond your own Master’s programme.

First-year Master’s students of the Utrecht University Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS) or Natural Sciences (GSNS) can enroll in the QBio honours programme while continuing their Master’s programme. The aim of the programme is to train the next generation of scientists in Quantitative Biology.

Master’s students of the Graduate School of Life Sciences are organised in the ‘Life Sciences Representatives’

Life Sciences Representatives

Life Sciences Representatives (LSR) is a student initiative to represent the interests and rights of all Master’s students of the Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS) in Utrecht University.

Constitution

The LSR consists of at least one Master's student of every programme within the School. All student members of the Educational Committee (EC) and Board of Studies (BoS) are members of the LSR. In addition, at least one representative of the LS-associated student associations will take place in the LSR.

Functions

• Represent the interests of all Master’s students of the GSLS at the educational level
• Feedback between the student members of the EC and BoS and the rest of the students
• Identify problems Master’s students experience within the course of their studies and try to resolve them, either by:
  - reporting and discussing the problems or complaints in the EC, BoS or programme coordinator meetings
  - taking direct action or passing on the problem to those who are fit to handle it

For more functions and / or information you can send an email to: LSR@umcutrecht.nl.

Are you innovative, entrepreneurial, intellectually versatile, goal oriented, and socially responsible? Do you want to get more out of your Master’s programme? Then the Young Innovators might be of interest to you!

Utrecht University offers the Young Innovators to high achievers with leadership potential. The Young Innovators is a selective 15 EC honours course at the graduate level, taken on top of any Master’s programme. This course is about leadership, innovation skills, responsibility, and ethics, and it is structured around the major challenges of modern societies in a globalised world:

• Sustainability and growth
• Globalization and identity
• Entrepreneurship and ethics
• Stability and change

Think outside your discipline

These multifaceted themes demand the joint efforts of experts from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. They also require knowledge of energy, climate dynamics, food, technology, and health. Insight into the dynamics of societies, law and economics, languages and cultures, and history and philosophy are also essential.

The issues transcend national and cultural borders. Therefore, the programme is conducted entirely in English and reflects a substantial participation of international students.

Learn more about the Young Innovators.

Are you an ambitious Master’s student looking for an intellectual challenge? Then apply to join our Graduate Honours Interdisciplinary Seminars!

This is a series of small-scale seminars, three to four meetings each, about the focus areas of research at Utrecht University. The topics will be diverse; ranging from global health issues and transition towards sustainability, to trends in youth culture and the philosophy of science. The seminars are hosted by distinguished researchers. Through close discussions with these researchers, you will get a better understanding of what it means to carry out interdisciplinary research, what obstacles researchers face, how to create a good research set-up and how to communicate about it with researchers from other disciplines as well as laymen.

The programme takes one year (7.5 ECTS). Would you like to know more about this programme? Read more about the Graduate Honours Interdisciplinary Seminars.