Collaboration
Collaboration with research organisations and private parties
Utrecht is the national focal point of Earth Sciences in The Netherlands. At Utrecht University research groups from the Faculty of Geosciences and the Faculty of Sciences study a large spectrum of topics concerning the solid Earth, its hydrosphere, its biosphere and its atmosphere. Key national applied research institutes are located on campus or in the nearby area, which stimulates collaboration and strengthens the quality of research and education.
We are a science institute and over 95% of our research funding is science-based, either direct government funding or, e.g., coming from national NWO or international EU/ERC programmes. The remainder mainly comes from research organisations in the (semi-)public sector and only for a small amount from private companies. In all collaborations, we value our scientific independence and we are always looking to engage the fundamental scientific questions behind commercial and societal challenges. Almost all our projects are long-term PhD or postdoc projects, able to publish results freely in the open literature. Only on rare occasions we enter into short-term consultancy work.
Amongst our partner institutes in the Netherlands are: TNO, Royal NIOZ, Naturalis, KNMI, Deltares, RIVM, PBL, and KWR.
Larger research programmes
The Department is involved in many international and national collaborations. On the national level, we specifically highlight
- NESSC, the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre;
- the NWO DeepNL programme;
- the Darcy Center for Porous Media Science & Technology;
- the Origins Center;
- EPOS-NL, the Dutch contribution to the European Plate Observatory System; and
- the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo), in particular the project Structures of Strength
National co-ordination of policies for research and education is further strengthened via the Sector Portrait Earth and Environmental Sciences.
On the international level, we participate in a number of EU-funded projects and programmes (overview on separate page). Among other international collaborations are the SFB 1313 with the University of Stuttgart, PProGRess UGent, and CEED Oslo.
We are a member of the Geo.8 - European Alliance for Earth Sciences.