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Which ÀÖÓãºǫ́-students stood out the past year because of excellent study results or achievements outside the university walls? Six nominees are left in the race for the Student Awards 2016-2017. The winners of the awards for the Best Master’s Thesis and Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements will be announced at the Start of the Academic Year, on Monday September 4th.

Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements

The three nominees for the Student Award Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements are:

Utrecht Physics Challenge Team

Nine students belonging to the students association A-Eskwadraat organized The Utrecht Psychics Challenge, where they showed different aspects of physics at a live event on the Domplein in Utrecht. They also organized a successful Student Challenge, with national and international participants. Programmes: Mathematics and Physics, faculty of Science.

Roos Ykema

She is the initiator of the Taalles Vluchtelingen Utrecht Team (language lessons for refugees). In a Utrecht refugee center Roos successfully organizes language lessons, whilst also instructing dozens of volunteers, being the liaison for other organizations, developing the teaching materials and recruiting both volunteers and refugees. By participating in language lessons refugees can use their time in a useful and pleasant way.

Roos studies both Environmental Sciences (Faculty of Geosciences) and Law (Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance).

Apollo Society

Sophie Merckelbach and Sabine van der Laan are the driving forces behind the Apollo Society. This society, international at this point, organizes lectures and seminars for motivated medical students. Not only to broaden their horizon, but also to offer the possibility to discuss subjects on a more in-depth level.Their focus lies on stimulating relevant, patient oriented research. Programme: Medicine, Faculty of Medicine.

Best Master’s Thesis

The three nominees for the Student Award Beste Master´s Thesis are:

Amir-Hossein Sadeghi

During his thesis research at the UMCU Amir has developed, in nine months’ time, a heart tissue model that can simulate heart fibrosis. He did this by using several techniques in tissue engineering. The end result has already been published in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

Study programme: SUMMA (Selective Utrecht Medical Master), faculty of Medicine.

Bas Penning de Vries

Confounding and missing data are common problems in observational and non-randomized studies for causal effects of treatments and exposures. In his thesis Bas shows that a method that has been recommended and used frequently (a combination of multiple imputation and propensity score analysis), is actually insufficient.

Study programme: Epidemiology (EPIM), faculty of Medicine.

Maarten Bransen

Maarten’s research focusses on the optimalisation of the optical properties of gold nanorods. These nanorods can be used for all sorts of purposes, for instance for fotothermic (cancer)treatments or to administer medication in specific parts of the body. Maartens results can lead to interesting use in catalysis or help in detecting very low concentrations of molecules via spectroscopy.

Study programme: Nanomaterials: Chemistry and Physics, faculty of Science.

Prize money and a certificate

Rector Bert van der Zwaan of the Utrecht University will hand out the awards at the Dom Church. The winners will receive a certificate and 1500 euro in prize money.