Our vibrant community
Team science is crucial in the pursuit of groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research and inspiring education. In open dialogues and encouragement, we stimulate 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.
I'm proud to say that my team is really great The highest award in Dutch academia has been awarded to Corné Pieterse. Pieterse's research team concentrates on how plants protect themselves, and the role of microbes that live on the roots of plants. Pieterse is proud of his team. Certainly, doing excellent science is crucial, but to me, working together in a very pleasant way is just as important.
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
The Faculty of Science has an excellent and extensive infrastructure for its research activities. Many of the facilities are among the top research facilities in Europe and are made available to both internal and external researchers.
Facts & Figures
1795 employees work in our faculty. In 2022 414 new employees joined our faculty, with an average age of 32.
66 nationalities are represented in our faculty. 89 colleagues come from Germany, 60 are Italian and 43 originate from China
70% of our employees has a 1 fte appointment. 25% of our colleagues work part-time and have an appointment between 0.2 and 0.8 fte.
Impact
The Faculty of Science and Utrecht University encourage and support researchers in increasing the impact of their research. Here are some stories about research based startups.
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.
