Summer School (Biomedical Research Lab)

This interdisciplinary lab course gives you a realistic insight into the life of a biomedical researcher. During this intensive 2 week course, we provide advanced bachelor students (with a background in medicine and/or life sciences) the opportunity to conduct authentic and real-world research in a well-equipped (wet) laboratory. This research topic will focus on an urgent medical need, e.g. on an actual patient case with an unknown medical problem or on an ongoing translational medicine research problem. All participants are divided into subgroups that will all study the same problem from different perspectives by applying different research methods.

In the first 2 days of this course, together with your peers, you will define a hypothesis through conducting a brief literature study, using (unpublished) research documents or a medical patient file. Then, you will all test the same hypothesis in a biomedical laboratory by using different approaches and research methods. You will be extensively supervised by experts in the field and qualified laboratory staff. You will have work meetings with the supervisors and the other students, where the obtained data and plans are discussed.

At the end of the course, you will together write a brief research report with the acquired data. In addition, you will present the final outcomes of your project to your peers and the staff, just like professional researchers do at research conferences.

The interdisciplinary nature of this course will bridge the gap between biomedicine and (translational) medical research to further enhance ongoing and actual medical (research and patient) problems.