Study programme

Students are required to complete a major research project. 

Profiles take up a big part of your 2^nd year and can be viewed as the minor in your Master’s. They are designed to equip you with skills for your next step while studying. You select 1 out of 9 profiles, all with an own theme and focus. You can choose profiles that provide you with a broad skill set and help you prepare for a business, educational or societal career, or profiles that provide you with in-depth research skills, catering for a research career. The options include:

1. Applied Data Science profile
2. Bioinformatics profile
3. Communication profile
4. Complex Systems profile
5. Education profile
6. General Research profile
7. Life Science and Society profile
8. Management profile
9. Translational Science profile

You will spend ten weeks completing compulsory theoretical courses.

Elective courses enable you to increase your knowledge within your field of interest or (in part) to address educational deficiencies.

This writing assignment may consist of either a clear and thorough overview of recent literature, concluded by an in-depth discussion, or a PhD grant proposal.

During the course of the Master’s programme, you are required to attend the Introducing Life Sciences week, at least seven Life Sciences seminars, and three workshops of the Navigation Towards Personal Excellence programme.

Introduction Risk Assessment

The fundamentals of risk assessment will be introduced. Related concepts including health impact assessment and burden of disease assessment will be explained.  The role of different disciplines (exposure science, toxicology, epidemiology) will be outlined. The importance of not only human risk assessment, but also environmental and ecosystem risk assessment will be made clear. Moreover, an introduction to inter- and transdisciplinarity and the One Health approach will be given. The exposome will also be introduced, underlining the new and important omics research.

Introduction to the research fields

The student will be introduced to the different research fields: One Health, Exposure Science/Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology. The differences and similarities for microbial, chemical, and toxicological agents related to risk assessment (e.g. terminology differences, calculation similarities, etc.) will be explained.

Study design

Lectures and active classes related to study designs will contain the basics of epidemiological, experimental animal studies and in vitro studies: such as study design, study biases, population studies, experimental studies, sample size analyses/determination, exposure strategies/determination as applied to environmental issues. Differences for communicable vs non-communicable diseases will also be addressed.

This course will provide an overview of the different aspects of exposure sciences, elucidating the similarities and differences between the three tracks.

Concepts of exposure

A short introduction regarding the concepts of exposure will be given. Simple frameworks, concentrations, etc.

Sources and determinants of exposure

Within this part, we will teach the students about different sources of exposure, routes of exposure and other factors related to exposure determination. This includes fate processes, bioaccumulation, source attribution (air, water, soil, diet, etc.), determinants of exposure, modes of transmission (blood-borne, droplet, airborne, foodborne etc), multi-host infectious diseases and infectious disease cycles, co-exposures (chemicals-microbes, e.g. biofilm).

Exposure assessment: measurement and modelling

Here, the students will be introduced to measurement techniques and modelling related to assessing exposure, e.g. chemical analyses in complex matrices (in vitro cultures, human samples), vector-borne vs direct transmission, estimation of internal exposure based on external data, bioaerosols, modelling and measurement of external environmental exposure surfaces, behavioural influences on personal exposure, personal exposure assessment and the use of biomarkers (linking to omics) and the Exposome concept.

Omics

The different state-of-the-art omics techniques will be discussed, including the concept of omics research, e.g. exposome, microbiome, virome, toxicogenomics and resistome. Moreover, approaches in omics (from PCR to sequencing, micro arrays and whole genome sequencing), bioinformatics of sequencing data, and pathway analyses will be addressed.

This course will describe the health effects related to the environment. How can disturbances in the ecosystem (deforestation, melting of the polar ice caps, etc.) influence our body, down to molecular levels?

Population and ecosystem

Different types of populations will be described, e.g. wildlife and ecosystems, general public and workers as specific population. 

The topics that will be further discussed are climate change, antimicrobial resistance, multi-stressors, emerging chemical- and biological agents in air, water and soil, green space and blue space, occupational health. A variety of environmental stressors will be covered to illustrate methodological issues and to obtain knowledge on major environmental factors. Multiple assessment methods will be discussed, e.g. modelling, ecotoxicology, health monitoring. Moreover, the importance and different methods of monitoring and (disease) surveillance in human and animal populations and ecosystems will also be discussed. Complex systems will also be introduced.

Adverse outcome pathway

An introduction of the toxicological and immunological mechanisms of health effects at individual organism level, down to the molecular level will be given. How can observed exposures affect population health? This will be explained via dose-effect relationships associated with particular agents (chemical, biological, etc.) in specific target (organ) systems. Moreover, an introduction of integrated approach to testing and assessment (IATA) will be given.

Omics

Omics can also be used to assess health outcomes in addition to omics in exposure research. The course will build on the earlier omics use for exposure. This will include health effects related to microbiome, virome, resistome.

Students choose one of the following track courses:

• Advanced One Health
• Advanced Exposure Science and Environmental Health
• Advanced Toxicology

Advanced One Health

The One Health specialization will focus on infectious diseases. Trends and drivers for the emergence and spread of multispecies diseases (including zoonotic diseases) (e.g. demographic, behaviour, biodiversity loss etc.), surveillance and prevention will be addressed, as well as the basics of infectious disease epidemiology. The role of wildlife and ecosystems, for instance, transmission between livestock and wildlife will be included. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance in pathogens and indicator organisms and potential interventions in antimicrobial use will be highlighted. The resistome will be introduced, including the transmission of genes between different reservoirs. Risk analysis will be performed, including quantitative microbial risk assessment (e.g. foodborne infections).

Advanced Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology

The Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology specialization will train students in more advanced methods of exposure science and environmental epidemiology. We will address exposures in the general environment (i.e. air pollution, green space, noise, EMF,  pesticides, climate change) and specifically the occupational environment. Topics that will be addressed include the implementation of the exposome concept; improvement of individual exposure assessment using wearables; exposure modelling and epidemiological data analysis using the computer program R; analysis of correlated exposure data; practical measurement of exposure and lung function. We will discuss methods to translate epidemiological study results into assessment of health impacts and (global) burden of disease, using systematic reviews, meta-analysis and recent (controversial) confidence assessment methods (risk of bias, GRADE).

Advanced Toxicology

The Toxicology specialization will be a research-based teaching approach: lectures and (individual) assignments related to the current themes that the Toxicology department is working on: immunotoxicology, neurotoxicology, endocrine toxicology and exposure. For this study year, microplastic research will be the focus. What are the effects of microplastics on the immune system, or the developing foetus? Can microplastics cross the blood-brain barrier and how is this researched? The reduction of animal testing in toxicological research will also be discussed. Students will work in groups on a theme and will present the highlights to other students. PhD students will present their current research in an interactive form.

In the last two weeks of the ten weeks course period, all students will be together for a joint course. Subject matter from the different tracks will be integrated.
Possible topics are:

• Sustainable livestock farming
• Tackling AMR
• Pandemic preparedness
• Food chain (exposure at farm level, exposure to ecosystem (manure), food hygiene, cultural differences)

Risk management and risk communication will also be a part of this process, to train the student in a complete risk analysis process.