Graduate School

In the lead Introductory course

The RIMLS Graduate School course “In the Lead” will provide new PhD candidates with insights, tips and tricks to be at the forefront of your research and training objectives. In short, you and your needs for a successful PhD are the focus of the program – i.e. you are in the lead.

Working in small groups, you will explore what drives you in your research and what you acquire to achieve your goals. What does a supervisor expect from you? A PhD project has highs and lows, but how will you recognize and deal with the challenges that lie ahead? Using ‘Strengthsfinder’ you will discover your talents and how to use them to your advantage. Finally, you will interact and network with your peers.

Here are some experiences other PhD Candidates had with this Graduate Course: 

• "It was really nice to meet all new PhD students and that you see you are in the same phase, have the same passion, worries and questions about doing your PhD. You get to know each other really well in just two days."
• "It’s much more useful than I expected. It really leads to new insights about yourself, and also gives you the encouraging feeling that you are not the only one experiencing worries and struggles in the start of you PhD."

Supervisor of the year Ronald van Rij

18 January 2018

For the first time the RIMLS PhD council organized the Supervisor election wih many nominees. Ronald van Rij turned out to be the winner for 2017.

The PhD council invited PhD candidates to anonymously submit three reasons why their supervisors deserved to become the RIMLS superhero of the year. The reasons were anonimised and the council asked several judges to rank. The three best-ranked supervisors were: Jack Schalken, Alessandra Cambi and Ronald van Rij. Then, the PhD council opened a period in which everyone could vote for one supervisor. There were some very enthusiastic campaigns going on: there were no less than 250 unique votes!

The PhD council hopes that this competition will become a fun and inspiring tradition at the RIMLS. On November, 2018 the council will call for nominations again, so be alert and take the new chance to acknowledge the value of our daily superheroes. Excellence is shown in many ways, and excellent supervision is something we should all strive for!

Within sight of my PhD A brand new course

As a follow up of our highly evaluated PhD Introduction Course “In the lead”, in 2017 we launched the course entitled “Within sight of my PhD” for PhD candidates who are halfway their project. Two groups attended this new program and were very enthusiastic about this new course.

This is what they say afterwards: 

• It was very useful to make a pause in my work and take some time to think about my learning process, career decisions and communication skills. 
• I think it is very nice that RIMLS focuses on developing our 'soft skills'. This course was actually very useful!  
• Thanks to everyone involved in setting up this program. It has really opened my eyes and we all need a point to reflect. I wish everyone involved the best of luck with the program and beyond.  
• I was a bit skeptical in the beginning of the course, but I was pleasantly surprised.

RIMLS PhD retreat

26 April 2017

In April 2017, the 23rd edition of the RIMLS PhD retreat was held at the Conference Centre Koningshof at Veldhoven. This event organized by and for PhD candidates of the RIMLS institute was a great success, exemplified by the enthusiasm of all attendees and the professional organization by the responsible PhD committee.

Almost 200 participants, including 6 PhD candidates from our collegial Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Barcelona presented their results, debated about political issues, and spent some time on social activities such as a pub quiz and a party.  

All 50 last year PhD candidates presented their results in an oral presentation, while all other participants shared their results or research plans during a poster presentation. A jury consisting of Natalia Revelo Nuncira, Christian Büll, Dov Ballak and Bert van der Reijden, evaluated all presentations. Their anonymous opinion was that the overall quality of all presentations and especially the oral presentations was remarkably high. All presenters can be genuinely proud of their achievements.  

The keynote speaker of this year was Ron Heeren. He gave an inspiring lecture about translational molecular imaging towards personalized medicine. By showing his slides, he presented a view of the not-to-distant future, and how these state-of-the-art techniques can be applied by researchers and physicians. 
 
Different than other years there was a debate workshop. Here, all PhD candidates learned about different styles and techniques of debating, that proved to be useful at the last session of the retreat: grand debate on policy in science. Unfortunately, two members of the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) of two different political parties were last-minute unable to join the discussion. Nevertheless, Jos van der Meer, John Schalken and René Bindels held a lively debate with the audience about the next statements: (1) policy and society should have no influence in determining topics worth researching, (2) positive discrimination for women in sciences is not needed anymore, (3) public academic institutes should be able to freely use patented materials for their research purposes, (4) grant applications should be done anonymously. It was a pleasure to see the audience interacting vividly about the statements. 

The RIMLS management team would like to thank the participants, the jury members, workshop leader, keynote speaker, and the debaters. Above all, we would like to thank the organizing committee: Jasper van Beek, Estel Collado Camps, Benjamin Harich, Sónia de Lacerda Schickert, Svenja Mennens, Daan Panneman, Bas van der Schoot and Caroline Sieverink.

We hope to welcome you next year at the PhD retreat 2018!  

Winners of the best oral presentation:
Omar Tutakhel (theme Renal disorders) & Guido van Mierlo (theme Cancer development and immune defense) 

Winner of the best poster presentation:
Christopher Geven (theme Infectious diseases & global health)

See all the photo's here.