Our vibrant community
Team science is crucial in the pursuit of groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research and inspiring education. Do you love to cooperate and have firm and open dialogues? We stimulate that as well as your curiosity and new initiatives based on scientific and fundamental insights.
Talking to colleagues makes things clearer The work we do can be highly specialised and may be difficult for others to understand. Working here, I’ve realised that you don’t have to walk this path on your own. After a tough day or a disappointing result, there are always people that want to help. Talking to colleagues makes things clearer and gives me fresh perspectives and the strength to continue with my work.
A firm team With a good diversity of colleagues and knowledge in my research group, the team developed fantastically. Whether you are a PhD candidate or an Associate Professor, your opinions are equal and that is great.
Lili’s proto Lab In Lili’s Proto Lab student-teams and employees can design and fabricate prototypes. The aim is to pursue challenge-based projects and to contribute directly to larger UU-interdisciplinary projects in strategic areas of fundamental science, education, open science, and sustainability.
World class infrastructure
At the Faculty of Science you execute research in an excellent and extensive infrastructure. Many of the facilities are among the top research facilities in Europe and are attractive to both internal and external researchers.
Facts & Figures
1719 employees work in our faculty. In 2024 287 new employees joined our faculty, with an average age of 39.
We are proud of our diverse community of colleagues with 72 different nationalities.
78% of our employees have a full-time appointment, while 22% work part-time with an appointment ranging from 0.2 to 0.8 FTE.
Impact
Do you want to increase the impact of your work outside academia? There is practical and financial support for the best ideas. Below you can see some of our IMPACT projects.
Student at School (SOS)
This project connects bachelor students to secondary schools in the Utrecht region. Our goal is to enthuse students for a career in education and offer them some hands-on experiences. These students help support (exam)pupils with catching up on their lessons and curriculum, assist with ‘profielwerkstukken’, and support teachers during school projects. In this way we help alleviate the shortage of teachers in education.
uCrowds
What are the effects of specific measures on the course of events? Computer scientist Roland Geraerts and his start-up uCrowds investigated this for the Dutch general election on 17 March. The simulations show that voting takes more time, but that the total delays are manageable.
Scientific mural paintings Utrecht
How many people in Utrecht know about the groundbreaking discoveries made in their city? And that these are made by people who walked through the same streets as them? To give those discoveries more fame, multiple places in Utrecht will showcase mural paintings about these scientific disoveries.
The project is started by Utrecht physicists Sander Kempkes and Ingmar Swart.
All about plastic soup
To create awareness about all aspects of plastic soup, a website has been built for everyone who is working on a school paper, or wants to give a presentation about plastic pollution in the ocean. On the site everything about ‘plastic soup’: from how it was created to solutions for a plastic-free ocean, is explained. All of the website contents are based on scientific articles.
Erik van Sebille and Aike Vonk are the founders of this website.