Education

To address major societal challenges, research needs to go beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines. We believe this starts with education. By exposing students to people from different scientific fields, they learn to deal with diverse perspectives and can broaden their horizons. Professors often give guest lectures, sometimes even outside their own faculty. As an interdisciplinary program, we've been involved in setting up two different courses.

History and biomedical sciences students find common ground

In 2023, we brought together students from history and biomedical sciences for the first time.

History, ethics, and biomedical sciences: at first glance, not an obvious combination. Different research methods, different ways of thinking, different students. Yet, there are overlaps, and the fields can learn much from each other. Master's students from History and Biomedical Sciences were recently brought together to work on an educational project within the interdisciplinary Regenerative Medicine program. This was done with preparation and guidance from faculty members of the Faculty of Humanities (Paul van Trigt, Maurits Meerwijk, and Claire Weeda) and the Leiden University Medical Center (Niels Geijsen, Pascale Dijkers, and Nienke de Graeff), in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave and the online platform Things That Talk. Read more here (only Dutch). 

Education that meets market needs: new course for master’s students focused on quality in drug development

With your master’s degree, you can directly meet industry needs. The new course Practical Aspects of Quality Management in Pharma and Biotech provides just that. The LACDR and LUMC jointly developed the course with the Biotech Training Facility, located at the Leiden Bio Science Park. The first students started in September 2023.

“There is a strong demand for people with expertise in quality and quality control in the development and production of drugs and vaccines. Several companies at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP) expressed this need to us.” These are the words of Miranda van Eck and Jolanda van der Zee, program directors of the master’s programs Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences (BPS) and Biomedical Sciences (BMS). Van Eck is a professor at the LACDR, and Van der Zee is an associate professor at the LUMC. “The rapid scientific developments in regenerative medicine require a new generation of researchers with knowledge of quality for this complex group of medicines.” Read more here.