When Emeritus Professor René Bindels started here in 1981, manuscripts were typed on a typewriter and figures were drawn by hand. By the time Professor Joost Hoenderop started his PhD in 1996, email and fax were reshaping scientific collaboration. Today, PhD candidate Esra Canki routinely works with datasets larger than entire projects from a generation ago. Yet despite four decades of technological change, all three recognize the same curiosity, determination and international spirit that define a PhD trajectory. In this blog, our PhD editor Robbin Kramer brings these three generations together to reflect on what has changed, and what has remained remarkably constant, in PhD life.
Four decades of PhD life
Few professions have generations as clearly defined as academia. Every four years or so, a new cohort of PhD candidates arrives, bringing fresh perspectives while inheriting the ideas and traditions of those who came before them. This way, science advances one generation at a time. Over the course of four decades, physiology researchers have gone from hand-drawn figures and mailed manuscripts to omics datasets containing millions of datapoints. Yet according to René Bindels, Joost Hoenderop and Esra Canki, all part of or alumni of the Physiology group at Radboudumc, the essence of a PhD remains surprisingly unchanged.
The group's successive moves across campus mirror the evolution of the PhD experience itself. René remembers working in the preclinical building, now the Study Center, drawing figures by hand in a small office separated by wooden partitions. Joost described daily coffee breaks in the Trigon building, which brought professors and students together and created an unusually open atmosphere. Although the group has moved again since then, now to and from the research tower, all three agree that this sense of accessibility and collaboration remains one of its defining features.
From black box to big data
The contrasts became most apparent when the conversation turned to the science itself. During his PhD, René investigated the relationship between diet and hypertension, often feeling, as he puts it, "like a circus artist trying to train rats." At the time, physiology largely treated the body as a black box. By the time René returned from a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States to establish his own research group, the field was undergoing a transformation. Molecular biology was rapidly expanding, allowing researchers to explore the mechanisms behind physiological processes rather than merely observing their outcomes.
One of the first PhD candidates René recruited was Joost Hoenderop, whom René remembers as "a relentlessly enthusiastic bouncing ball." Esra immediately laughs at the description: “That certainly hasn’t changed.” For Joost, this new era of research meant uncovering the molecular machinery that regulates calcium balance in the kidney. Together with technician Annemiete van der Kemp, he contributed to the discovery of the kidney calcium channel TRPV5, helping to answer questions that would have been impossible to tackle only a decade earlier.
Today, Esra's research reflects another shift in biomedical science. Where René's generation focused on whole organisms and Joost's on individual molecules, current PhD candidates increasingly work with large-scale datasets and advanced computational analyses. Meanwhile, the physiology field has zoomed back out again. Esra is now trying to discover biomarkers in serum and urine that can help detect early kidney failure. The tools have changed dramatically, and answering a single research question now often requires more data than an entire PhD project once generated. At the same time, the underlying goal remains remarkably familiar: understanding how the human body works and translating that knowledge into better health.
Esra is not necessarily envious of the techniques used by previous generations. "Clearly not the hand-drawn figures," she jokes. What she does sometimes envy is the scientific landscape they entered. "I feel like what was discovered back then was more discrete." Earlier generations often worked in fields where entirely new molecules, channels or pathways remained to be discovered. Today's breakthroughs more often come from understanding how existing biological systems interact. "Science has become much more relational," she explains.
What remains unchanged
Listening to the three scientists, it becomes clear that each generation quite literally stands on the shoulders of the previous one. René helped establish the molecular approaches that shaped Joost's PhD, while the discoveries made by Joost's generation now provide the foundation for Esra's data-driven research.
Beyond the changes in technology and scientific methods, the three were remarkably consistent in what they hope future PhD generations will preserve. Above all, they emphasized enthusiasm: the willingness to throw yourself wholeheartedly into a research question and pursue it with determination. They also share a strong appreciation for what Joost describes as the academic "bubble". Working alongside ambitious, intelligent young researchers creates an environment that is both stimulating and energizing. The group's international character further contributes to this atmosphere, exposing researchers to different perspectives and ideas. While academia may sometimes feel removed from the outside world, they agree that this international and youthful atmosphere remains one of its greatest strengths.
The technologies may have changed beyond recognition, but the essence of a PhD has not. Curiosity still drives the questions, persistence still carries projects through setbacks, and each new generation continues to build on the work of those before it. Perhaps that is why the title of "scientific generation" fits so well. Each cohort inherits knowledge from those before them, adds something of its own, and leaves a stronger foundation for the next. In that sense, science continues to advance exactly as it always has: by standing on each other's shoulders.
Oh, and before I sign off, I asked each of them what advice they would pass on to the next generation...
