UM Mazazine October 2011

magazine 03/October 2011

About education and research at Maastricht University

“We have a

top reputation abroad.

The key is to maintain it”

Wim Gijselaers, project leader of the Leading in Learning master plan – p. 4

First Euregional graduates of

vascular surgery Discussion with surgeon Michel Jacobs – p. 8

How reliable are the reports of

expert witnesses?

Harald Merckelbach in discussion with André Klip – p. 14

Content

Further 04 Leading in Learning master plan - Wim Gijselaers: Because an education model is never finished 08 Euregional collaboration - Michel Jacobs: First Euregional graduates of vascular surgery

22

Marja van Dieijen-Visser

head of the MUMC’s Clinical Chemistry Laboratory, supervisor of her first double PhD defence on the risk of heart damage due to exertion. “We hope to find biomarkers that we can use to detect this in the blood.”

10 Innovative education - Thomas Cleij: Natural sciences counterpart for UCM 12 Research and society - Hans Maarse: Competition in healthcare no guarantee of cost savings 14 Debate - Harald Merckelbach and André Klip: How reliable are the reports of expert witnesses?

18 Globalisation - Kiran Patel: “Historians have always been very bad prophets” 20 Excellent review - Alexander Sack: Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience assessed by NVAO 24 International - Mark Stout and Teun Dekker: UK students flock to UM 26 Off the job - Wiebe ‘Beekeeper’ Bijker 30 Social media - Tom van Laer: “Companies would do better to apologise”

32 Alumna Alexia van Engelen studied economics in Maastricht and is now the driving force behind the new, successful fashion label Sage&Ivy.

34 Alumni - Niko Kriegeskorte and Marieke Mur work together in Cambridge 36 University Fund - Jos Kievits: Success of Named Funds - Sponsor Otto Work Force - Dr Jan Huynen Award 38 All Stars - Gijs Beenker and Aart Smit: “Our 15 minutes of fame on the silver screen” News 7, 17, 28 and 29

We are an international teaching and research university The new academic year is upon us once more, and Maastricht University (UM) is again enjoying increased student interest. Our student number has grown again, this year particularly in the master’s programmes. UM was already renowned for the quality of its bachelor’s education, but last year we also received national recognition for the top quality of our master’s programmes. What’s more, we recently landed four prestigious grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the quality of our graduate schools.

An international research university, UM enjoys proven quality from the bachelor’s phase right through to its master’s and PhD programmes, not to mention the high-quality research that we directly apply in all our curricula.

This academic year will be dedicated to strengthening the university’s position in the region. From an economic perspective, UM is the largest employer in the province, and thus plays an important role in maintaining job opportunities and promoting quality of life in Limburg. And we aim to take this societal responsibility seriously, by playing a leading role in the Brainport 2020 initiative. At the same time, partly thanks to our new strategic programme, we continue to work towards the further internationalisation of the university, convinced as we are that the globalising world should also be reflected in our students’ learning processes. After all, we are producing the leaders of the new world! The strategic programme also highlights our latest research agenda, with its three interdisciplinary themes: Quality of Life, Learning and Innovation, and Europe in a Globalising World. These themes not only touch upon the grand challenges within Europe, but also correspond to several of the government’s “top sectors” in which

knowledge institutions, the government and the business sector will collaborate in the coming years in an effort to improve the country’s economic position.

By way of interdisciplinary research, UM aims to make a substantial contribution to these themes.

This issue, once again, presents a selection of interesting topics from UM’s teaching and research arenas. We hope you enjoy reading it.

Professor Gerard Mols, Rector Magnificus, Maastricht University

Gerard Mols

3

Leading in Learning master plan

Wim Gijselaers

Because

an education model is never finished

By Femke Kools

We are currently in the midst of the third wave of innovation in higher education.

Now more than ever, the focus is on preparing students for the complex society of both today and tomorrow. To this end, Maastricht University (UM) is making structural investments in educational quality via its Leading in Learning master plan. “At present, we have a top reputation abroad. The key is to maintain it”, says project leader and education theorist Professor Wim Gijselaers, PhD. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

4

Higher education as we know it today is the result of a number of ‘waves’ of innovation. The first wave, around 1920, aimed to improve the academic underpinnings of professional training, for example for doctors and accountants. In the 1960s, the second wave emphasised professional development through the introduction of methodologies such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL). And the third wave is now underway, characterised by “professionals who collaborate with other professionals, in an increasingly complex, dynamic society”, says Gijselaers, professor of Education at the UM School of Business and Economics.

“The university is no longer the only place where you get information; the fact is that Google has taken over that role. This means that we can better serve students by teaching them to evaluate valid and invalid information.

As a doctor, how do you deal with the fact that 10,000 new evidence-based treatments become available each year? How do you best prepare an accountant for the financial market of the future?”

Motto As the Executive Board realised over a year ago, if the university aims to uphold the motto ‘Leading in Learning’ in the future, it needs to invest now.

With student numbers rising but funding not increasing proportionally, continuing to deliver top-quality education is no easy task. This is one reason that UM no longer dominates the national education rankings.

The rankings, however, are not the primary motive behind the investments. “You invest in education not just for the rankings, but because as an institute you see the quality of education as having intrinsic importance”, says Gijselaers. It was for this reason that rector Gerard Mols initiated the Leading in Learning master plan, calling for investments in various educational innovation projects and phases over the course of three years.

Makeover In the first phase, all UM faculties received funding to revitalise their use of PBL. This allowed them to spend time on basic issues that were being swamped by the pressures of day-to-day work, such as better gearing the master’s programmes towards internships. Best practices are being shared university wide, and January will see the start of a second batch of faculty projects. In addition, 20 micro-grants of € 5000 each have been distributed among staff members with an innovative education idea, such as developing a learning module based around Second Life or an ICT tool to help students select the right master’s programme. These micro-grants will allow staff to implement and evaluate their ideas.

Further, lecturers interested in education management are given the opportunity to follow a course in this field. “We’ve noticed that people like to innovate, be it on a small or a large scale”, says Gijselaers. “The teachers are enthusiastic, which infects others too. There’s a general feeling of ‘let’s put our noses to the grindstone’.”

Extensive analysis In addition to the faculty projects, there are also university-wide initiatives. One of these involves extensive analysis of the feedback that students are given on their work. “The students themselves are involved in this as well. They tend to see just a mark as too little. And you have to deal with cultural differences, too: try explaining to a student from the US that a 7 is a great mark. Over there that’s just an A.” Another ongoing UM-wide project revolves around the ‘international classroom’. How do you better prepare staff for cultural diversity in the tutorial groups, particularly given that this diversity will have a strong influence on students’ learning behaviour? All these projects result in ‘position papers’, which are sent to the UM Education Advisory

Faculty of Law

Matching and binding

Nationwide, around 30% of law students drop out after the first year, and only a minority manage to complete their bachelor’s degree within three years. In an effort to reverse this trend, all of this year’s incoming law students at UM are required to fill in a detailed questionnaire. The aim is to ensure that particularly motivated students come to Maastricht, and that they stay motivated and continue to study here. The questionnaires should provide insight into their motivation, marks, awareness of their own learning behaviour, plans for student life and more.

If a student is considered a ‘potential risk’ for early dropout, he or she will be invited for an introductory meeting. This will help prepare the student for what lies ahead, and give the faculty an overview of those students who may benefit from mentoring in the first year.

The students seem to enjoy answering the questions and feel that they are being taken seriously in the process of choosing a study programme. In a further measure to reduce dropouts, the composition of tutorial and practical groups will remain unchanged for the first two blocks, to give the students enough time to bond.

Ria Wolleswinkel, Director of Studies and holder of the Faculty Board’s education portfolio, also holds personal consultations with incoming students and is enthusiastic about the project.

“It’s really nice to work on something that directly answers the questions of the faculty.

All parties are better off for it.”

5

Board. Gijselaers: “This helps you get the discussion going, in any event.

Because it’s tied up in culture, change takes time.”

Evaluation With the master plan now underway for a full year, an interim evaluation is scheduled for autumn. Gijselaers expects a positive result, but at the same time expresses concern over the government’s plans for financial cutbacks. “I hope the Executive Board and the deans continue to support the initiative. In my view, it’s clear that we have no choice.

The present balance in the world is changing so quickly, and other countries are making rapid progress; you simply have to innovate. Ten years ago you went to China for a partnership with the idea that it’s them wanting to join us. Now it’s the other way around. And Germany is well on its way too. They still have a long road ahead, but if we do nothing now, some day they could be getting our top students for themselves.

So UM has to not only solve existing education problems in the coming years, but also set up an investment programme for the coming decades.”

6

UM plus point According to Gijselaers, all Dutch universities are now surfing the third wave of innovation – which is not to say that it’s particularly centrally organised. UM’s advantage is the great interest in innovation among its staff. “That entrepreneurial fighting spirit is still there. But at the same time, some people seem to think that

we can rest on our laurels. They think: ‘It’s over, now we can focus on things like research.’ That’s a misconception, in my view. Because our society is changing so rapidly, no education model will ever be finished again.

So the task here is not just for those focused on teaching, but also for all researchers at this university. After all, good education is closely linked to good research.”

Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience

Well begun is half done

Many students start their studies in psychology without knowing exactly what this entails. The focus on research in the programme, for example, tends to be underestimated. At the same time, research shows that study success during the first year – and particularly during the first semester – is a strong indicator for the outcome of the programme as a whole.

To give students a good idea of what the UM Bachelor in Psychology involves right from the outset, the faculty has taken a number of measures.

For instance, mentoring will now be linked to skills training, in which small groups of students conduct scientific research. The courses Statistics and Methods & Techniques will run parallel to this, and each block will pay explicit attention to how psychological knowledge is acquired and

developed. In this way, the faculty hopes to familiarise students with scientific research in the first year of the programme.

According to Arie van der Lugt (coordinator of the FPN Back to Basics course), “The students learn actively in this programme: they see for themselves how to get a grip on human behaviour using scientific methods, and they do their own psychological research. In other words, education and research go hand in hand!”

Prof. Luc Soete Rector Magnificus as of September 2012 Prof. dr. Luc Soete has been appointed as Rector Magnificus of Maastricht University as of September 2012. At that date prof.

Soete will succeed prof. dr. Gerard Mols.

Prof. Mols has positively responded to the request of the Supervisory Board to extend his office by a period of eight months until the start of the 2012-2013 academic year. Since 1986 Luc Soete has been professor of International Economic

Relations at the School of Business and Economics of Maastricht University. He is also the Director of UNU-MERIT (the United Nations University-Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Luc Soete Innovation and Technology). Since 2010 Luc Soete has also been in charge of the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) of the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences. and the AWT (the Advisory Council for He is a member of the KNAW (the Royal Science and Technology Policy).

Lifestyle has large impact on premature mortality The risk of death for middle-aged women with a low “healthy lifestyle score” is just as high as that for women who do not lead unhealthy lifestyles, but who are 15 years older. For men, this “ageing effect” is approximately 8.5 years.

These are the results of a Maastricht University study in which combined

lifestyle scores were derived from four factors: smoking, physical activity, nutritional pattern and body weight. The results are based on data from 120,000 men and women aged 55 to 69, and were recently published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The Netherlands Cohort Study was

launched in 1986 by researchers at the Maastricht University Department of Epidemiology and TNO Quality of Life.

Over the years, this ongoing study has provided a wealth of information and many new insights into the influence of diet and other lifestyle factors on cancer and mortality rates.

Maastricht team through to final of Annual Academic Prize 2011 The Maastricht University team “Visualising the Brain” was selected to compete against two other teams in the final of the Annual Academic Prize (“Academische Jaarprijs”) 2011. For this “battle of the universities”, the teams have to draw up a communication plan to bring the academic knowledge in their respective fields to the attention of a wider audience in an original manner. The three teams will present their plans on 26 October 2011, with the chance to walk away with the first

prize of € 100,000. The UM team is made up of students and academics, including Professor Rainer Goebel.

Their idea: an “augmented reality” application which uses the camera of a smartphone, for example, to project a 3D image of a human brain onto the user’s head. When the user then performs certain actions, such as lifting an arm, blinking or speaking into the microphone, the screen shows which brain areas are involved in such actions.

Team Annual Academic Prize 2011

7

Euregional collaboration

Michael Jacobs

First Euregional graduates of vascular surgery

By Loek Kusiak

The privatisation of healthcare demands that education, research and medical practice all be clustered under a single umbrella. To this end, the Maastricht/Aachen region aims to be a top European centre in the field of cardiovascular diseases.

This is the mission of cross-border “quartermaster” Professor Michael Jacobs, head of surgery at the Maastricht academic hospital (azM). “As a hospital, you can no longer afford to go it alone.”

On Wednesdays and Fridays, at dawn and weather permitting, the cardiovascular surgeon gets on his racing bike in Maastricht and crosses the 30 kilometres of hilly terrain to the University Hospital Aachen. Then, after a long day in the operating theatre, he gets back on his bike for the return trip

8

to South Limburg. “It’s nice to get 60 kilometres’ worth of physical exercise, and time to clear your head and think. Golf, my other addiction, gives you no time at all to think about work. Because if you’re not concentrating you won’t hit the ball well.” For the rest of the week, Jacobs (1957) works in the

Maastricht UMC+, directing the surgery department and the Cardiovascular Centre. “In Aachen I’m primarily a doctor; in Maastricht I’m more of a manager and lecturer.

When I worked at the Amsterdam Medical Centre I used to lecture as well. I still really enjoy that, as well as passing on operating techniques to surgeons.”

Jacobs’s life as a Euregional, cross-border physician, scientist and director began around 2005, when the azM and the Aachen hospital decided to establish a joint training institute, the European Vascular Centre. Under Jacobs’s direction, the centre aims to become a full-blown hospital with its own intensive care unit, recovery rooms and operating theatres at the Avantis business park, on the border of Heerlen and Aachen. “We have to respond to market forces in healthcare and be conscious of our costs”, says Jacobs. “The trend is to move from traditional academic hospitals to networks in the form of centres of excellence. If the azM were to go it alone, in ten years you’d no longer have a leg to stand on.”

Volume In the Netherlands alone, more than 40,000 people still die from cardiovascular diseases each year. This amounts to over 30% of total mortality nationwide. Hard figures like these underline the importance of high-quality cardiac care. Jacobs: “By collaborating with Aachen we can create volume, which will make us number 1 in the Netherlands.

And by volume I mean: doing many operations. Lots of experience means you end up with fewer complications.

That’s when we talk about top referral care. Health insurers don’t want to pay for anything less.”

Because Aachen’s vascular surgery unit was not an academic department before 2005, Jacobs was asked if he wanted to set one up. “It seemed like an exciting challenge, which I took on together with three experienced vascular surgeons and five junior surgeons. In 2006, the departments of vascular surgery in Maastricht and Aachen were assessed according to the German criteria for certified vascular centres. The treatment protocols in the two hospitals are now identical, and we’ve set up a single database of international publications on operations and patient groups.”

Milestone Under Jacobs’s direction, this year the European Vascular Centre produced four German junior surgeons who were trained in Aachen. “They’re now working in German hospitals.

But the training requirements between the two countries are still very different. Junior surgeons in the Netherlands who work in a German training clinic don’t get that period recognised as training time. The Dutch assessment system doesn’t review or accredit German programmes. Conversely, for junior surgeons in Germany the time they spend training in Maastricht or elsewhere in the Netherlands does count.

So we also have many junior surgeons from Germany in the Maastricht hospital. For the Vascular Centre to keep on

developing, the German and Dutch training requirements and diplomas really should be better geared towards one another. ‘Brussels’ has a lot more homework to do in that

regard. Funnily enough, I also had to retake the surgery certification exams before I could operate in Aachen.”

Despite the red tape, Jacobs is witnessing a continuing increase in the dialogue with German colleagues, including at a scientific level. “For example, they’re strong when it comes to developing biomechanical equipment, while together with CARIM we’re doing good research on cardiac arrhythmias, processes of atherosclerosis and so on. The German work environment is more hierarchical, whereas consultation and participation are more important for us. So it does take some time to find the middle ground between the two cultures.”

Sophisticated techniques

Jacobs trained with the late Co Greep, a renowned Maastricht surgeon, and in Houston, the Valhalla of cardiovascular surgery. He specialises in surgery for aortic aneurysms (dilation of the artery). “When an aneurysm ruptures, which often occurs in the abdominal aorta, this can lead to lifethreatening bleeding and death. We know next to nothing about how aneurysms develop; they’re like a black box. On average, there’s a 30% chance of losing the patient during the operation, and a high risk of complications even if they do survive. Our surgeons in Maastricht and Aachen have been able to reduce that risk using highly sophisticated surgical techniques, giving us the best results in the world.

If I can give a 25-year-old with an aneurysm another 25 years of extra quality of life, it gives me a real kick.” Still, Jacobs calls for more attention to be paid to the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. “Once a cardiovascular patient, always a patient. Doctors are on the damage-control side. Everything we do is secondary prevention. Patients who’ve suffered a brain haemorrhage are given all sorts of regimens and measures to lower their cholesterol. This can help you dramatically reduce the chance of a second haemorrhage. But of course, prevention and early detection of these diseases, which are often hereditary, ultimately have more effect.”

Professor Michael Jacobs (1957) completed his medical studies in 1982 in Maastricht. He then worked at the Maastricht academic hospital and the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. In 1993 he became head of vascular surgery at the Amsterdam Medical Centre. Since 2000 he has been head of surgery at the Maastricht UMC+, and since 2005 he has also led the vascular surgery department at the Aachen University Hospital. Jacobs pioneered the European Vascular Course, an annual conference with top speakers, lectures and demonstrations of new surgery techniques for heart and blood vessels.

9

Innovative education

Thomas Cleij

Natural sciences counterpart for UCM

By Annelotte Huiskes

September saw the launch of the Maastricht Science Programme, the natural sciences counterpart to the University College Maastricht (UCM). A unique bachelor’s programme, it allows students to compose their own curricula from courses in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. According to the proud dean of the programme, Professor Thomas Cleij, PhD, “Nowhere else in the world can students enjoy such enormous freedom of choice.”

With student numbers falling, these are tough times for natural sciences programmes in the Netherlands and neighbouring countries. “Apparently people no longer find these programmes interesting”, says Cleij. “So if you want to offer a programme in the natural sciences, you have to do it differently somehow. The world today is not what it was when I studied chemis-

10

try in Utrecht. Back then, the problems that scientists had to solve were still quite monodisciplinary. For example, as a chemist you might have had to create a new molecule. Now the world’s problems have to do with issues like sustainability, which means you have to combine things. You no longer need a chemist, but rather someone who has knowledge of chemistry and can also

combine it with other disciplines.

This is what the Maastricht Science Programme provides.”

Paving the way Cleij, who has taught chemistry for six years at UCM, pioneered the Maastricht Science Programme together with Louis Boon, the former dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences. “There’s no

doubt that UCM has proven to be highly successful. But I started to notice that the ‘traditional’ natural sciences student wasn’t choosing the UCM science programme. So I felt that this was a market share that we could gain. This gave rise to the idea for the new programme, and now at last we’re ready to launch this natural sciences track within Liberal Arts and Sciences.”

According to Cleij (himself a classically trained chemist), UM was able to take the plunge with this innovative educational concept precisely because it had no pre-existing natural sciences programme. “These traditional, monodisciplinary programmes tend to be sceptical about such an interdisciplinary approach in the bachelor’s phase. But we don’t have this traditional background, which makes it easier for us to launch something brand new that we really see as the future of the natural sciences. This also gives us the opportunity to make use of the knowledge and skills that Maastricht has built up in the life sciences, in subjects like maths, biology and physics.”

The philosophy Students following this broad-based bachelor’s programme can choose from about 100 courses in scientific disciplines. “Our philosophy is to offer students a mountain of Lego blocks for them to build their own model with”, says Cleij. “Of course, we do give them instructions on what sorts of models you could make. In essence, the staff serve as academic advisers for our students. I’ll be supervising some of them myself.”

Students can use the programme as a stepping stone to a more specialised master’s in chemistry or biology, for example, but also an interdisciplinary master’s such as the Biobased Materials programme currently being developed in Maastricht. “For that programme you need chemical knowledge of polymers, biological knowledge to understand where biomaterials come from,

and some background in engineering as well. You see these types of integrated master’s programmes being developed at other universities too.

These are the programmes that companies need, and in order to do well in them you need to know something about everything. Science nowadays is much more a question of integrating different disciplines and in this way changing society as well.”

Practice The curriculum was purposefully designed to make use of Problem-Based and Research-Based Learning, in which students work in small tutorial groups on research questions from real-life practice. “In the third year, we’ve also devoted six months to a research case.

This is quite unusual for the bachelor’s phase, but we’ve chosen to do this very deliberately. Students can do the research either at UM or at companies like DSM or Sabic, as long as the focus is on scientific research.”

Many of the expert staff needed for the programme can already be found at UM. “And if we don’t have someone in-house, then we go shopping in the region of Hasselt University, Zuyd University and Aachen. Lecturers are brought in from across the whole university and all around the region.”

The business sector, too, is closely involved in the programme (DSM and Sabic), as is the Province of Limburg.

Laboratories will be installed on the Chemelot campus.

Advertising When this interview is conducted, Cleij is in the midst of the admissions procedure. The majority of the applicants are international students. “I think that’s

because we haven’t been able to do any advertising, because the ministry gave its definitive approval for the programme only recently. So we weren’t widely known in Dutch high schools when students here were choosing their programmes, whereas students abroad tend to look around online for their study options. And they are some students, a dream audience! Each and every one of them is very talented, with high standards and broad interests that they don’t want to narrow down to just one thing. It’s certainly not the case that students apply here if they just don’t know what to choose.

Rather, these are students who know what they want and who want to combine things; for example, students who enjoy physics and neuroscience and want to do something with the both of them together. And in contrast to popular belief, boys are not in the majority; the ratio is about 50/50.”

Pioneers Cleij’s enthusiasm is bubbling over.

“Only once in a lifetime do you get the chance to set up an entirely new science programme. This is an exciting time to be involved in education.

The academic world is changing, and we need to look more and more towards privatised education models.

We’re already starting to offer students a lot more tailoring.” So would Cleij himself choose this programme, if he were a student today? “I think I would; I’d like to combine chemistry with archaeology. Those were the two programmes that I had to choose between at the time.” Forty students are expected to start in September, with the ultimate goal being an intake of 120 students per year.

Thomas Cleij (1970) is professor of Organic and Bio-Polymer Chemistry in Hasselt. He studied chemistry in Utrecht, graduating with a PhD dissertation entitled ‘Conjugated silicon based polymeric materials: Novel strategies for tailor-made polysilanes and polysilynes’. He is also an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in the United States.

11

Research and society

Competition in healthcare no guarantee of cost savings

By Jos Cortenraad

The privatisation of healthcare is one of the few options that will help to put a lid on rising healthcare costs. This is a view that enjoys broad political support, especially with a liberal government in power. However, it is highly questionable whether competition and commercialisation will genuinely contribute to the affordability of healthcare in the Netherlands. “That’s an illusion”, concludes Hans Maarse, professor of Policy Sciences at Maastricht’s Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, after a comprehensive five-year study financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

There was no shocked reaction to this news. No headlines in the newspapers, no emergency debate in the House of Representatives, not even any questions in parliament. But the conclusions drawn by Maarse and his research team in the book Markthervorming in de zorg (Market reform in healthcare) are clear: privatisation has a great influence on the accessibility, freedom of choice, solidarity and quality of care.

And – perhaps the most important finding from a political viewpoint – it increases costs.

Difficult This is bad news for the Rutte government, with the financial and economic crisis still fresh in the public’s memory and € 18 billion needing to be cut. “But apparently no-one’s overly shocked”, Maarse reflects, six months after the book was published. “Of course, I’ve had responses. It’s a book worth reading, I’ve been told. A bit difficult too.

Well, there are no easy answers to dif-

12

ficult questions. If there’s one sector in the Netherlands that’s complicated,

it’s healthcare. Is anyone actually doing something with this study?

I don’t know. Politicians thrive on oneliners, on short conclusions and compact solutions. I don’t have any of those. You also won’t hear me saying that privatisation is altogether a bad thing. It can be one instrument among many. I’m just saying that the regulation of the market doesn’t automatically bring about cost savings.”

In fact, the study paints a black-andwhite picture: the costs will rise. “That’s only logical”, says the Maastricht professor, who explores at least 5200 kilometres of the South Limburg hills on his racing bike each year. “Parties want to grow on a free market.

Through more supply, they create their own demand. They’ll compete with one another, offer more treatments, introduce marketing. That’s entrepreneurship. The healthcare market is

basically infinite. There’s more than

enough demand, and a growing arsenal of technological developments and new therapies and care treatments. It’s an ideal basis for growth.”

Conflict This is not a bad development in itself, because after all, healthcare can always be better. We all want longer and healthier lives. But there are, quite simply, financial limits: the government cannot spend more of its income on care, and nor does it want to. “And this is the fundamental point”, says Maarse. “The government wants to promote entrepreneurship, improve healthcare and at the same time continue to determine how much public funding is spent on healthcare. There’s a particular field of tension between privatisation and government control, if I can put it gently. This is where market and healthcare logic come into conflict.”

Hans Maarse

Privatisation, in the eyes of policymakers and politicians, would have to deliver a lot more than just cost savings.

“Yes, greater efficiency, more choice and broader accessibility for the public. More innovation and quality too.

And in our study, we establish that this doesn’t necessarily come about automatically either. First, the public inevitably ends up having to bear at least part of the higher costs in the form of higher own risk and a more limited basic care package. Not to mention the role of healthcare insurers – they have a great influence too.

Those who want to can get supplementary insurance or pay for it themselves, which puts the idea of solidarity under pressure. In the Netherlands we don’t want a social divide; care has to be accessible for everyone. But ultimately that will only apply to a basic package. So that means we fall short of this notion of accessibility for everyone. These are politically sensitive matters; I wonder how The Hague will deal with them.”

Tension And what of efficiency? Isn’t it a good thing if pressure from competition

helps institutions to control their costs and not all separately invent the wheel? “If efficiency means specialisation, then that can have a big influence on choice. In practice it can mean you don’t have to go to Maastricht for a certain treatment, but can get it in Roermond instead. As for more choice, that’s another field of tension: you’re asking institutions to compete but at the same time to work together and make agreements on specialisations.

It’s contradictory. And when it comes to quality and innovation, a growth market attracts private investors, who naturally want to gain a certain return on their contribution. So the temptation is there to invest only in lucrative treatments.”

Clearly, Maarse is no advocate of the privatisation of healthcare. “Well, I’m not making value judgements. I’m merely suggesting that the privatisation of healthcare doesn’t automatically lead to lower costs or better care and more choice. It’s not a panacea. But competition can indeed have positive effects. You can see that in long-term nursing and geriatric care. Institutions compete with one

another and this pushes their level of service provision up. In a follow-up study we’re now going to investigate that further. Maybe we should slowly start to accept market solutions – that’s not my choice to make. I’m just saying that things in this sector are particularly complex and nuanced: the research tells us that there are simply no standard or easy solutions.”

Hans Maarse (1948) studied political science and sociology in Nijmegen. He then worked at the University of Twente for ten years before relocating to Maastricht in 1986. From 1995 to 2001 Maarse was dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences (the predecessor of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences) at Maastricht University.

The book Market reform in healthcare is available via www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/ main1/sitewide/sitewide11/markthervormingzaldezorgdiepgaandveranderen.htm

13

Debate

Harald Merckelbach

André Klip

Expert witnesses in the courtroom

By Jolien Linssen

Movies and television series have acquainted virtually all of us with a basic understanding of the judicial process. An offence has been committed, a suspect identified and a weapon found. What is still lacking, of course, is the necessary evidence. Fortunately, the public prosecutor has a whole range of expert witnesses on hand to help fill in the blanks; to analyse the bullet, create a DNA profile and decide on the mental health of the suspect. At the end of the evening, we know exactly who committed the crime, how it happened and, last but not least, why. Case closed. If only reality were as straightforward as this.

Harald Merckelbach, professor of Psychology, knows from experience that it is not. As an expert witness, he regularly appears in the courtroom to inform jurists and the police about brain functioning and its relation to criminal behaviour. His observations based on these visits are startling. “Miscarriages of justice are often the result of mistakes made by expert witnesses”, he says.

With expert witnesses, Merckelbach is referring to a particular branch of forensic behavioural scientists: those psychologists and psychiatrists who are supposed to decide whether a suspect is sane or insane, lying or telling the truth. In other words, his colleagues.

14

“They enter the courtroom believing they exactly know how matters stand”, he says. “What they often do, however, is put the judge on the wrong track.”

For this reason, Merckelbach finds it all the more disturbing that it is these professionals who blame judges and public prosecutors for their lack of scientific and medical knowledge. “You often hear things like: ‘What a stupid judge, he’s incapable of assessing the technical or medical aspects.’ I think this is sheer nonsense.

We should first and foremost critically evaluate our own work. Most behavioural reports written by forensic psychologists and psychiatrists need a lot of improvement.”

Judges To André Klip, professor of Transnational Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure and himself a judge, criticism aimed at jurists’ lack of general expertise sounds familiar, yet unconvincing. “Of course judges are bad psychologists”, he says. “Just as they’re bad firearms experts, because they know nothing of ballistics. As a judge, you’re always confronted with subjects that fall outside your field of expertise. In order to clarify and interpret the information at hand, you need to make use of specialist knowledge. It’s up to you then to ask the questions that are of legal relevance.”

When it comes to the behavioural reports written by forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, Klip’s experiences are quite positive. “Personally, I find it very helpful to read those reports”, he says. “Judges are happy to meet experts who argue convincingly that a certain suspect is either a lunatic or perfectly healthy. This information offers an insight into how a person came to commit a certain deed, which is helpful in reaching a well-considered sentence.”

To this end, Merckelbach’s statements on his colleagues’ work may come as an unwelcome surprise. Klip: “As a rule, judges rely on the analysis of expert witnesses.

We’re not in a position to evaluate their degree of expertise. But if a leading psychologist like Harald Merckelbach says there’s something wrong with his colleagues’ reports, then yes, it makes me hesitate.”

Psychologists and psychiatrists The problem, according to Merckelbach, is that most psychologists and psychiatrists are simply not fit for the role of expert witness. “Many have a clinical background”, he explains. “In the courtroom, they’re confronted with rare cases like child murder and violent behaviour complicated by cocaine use, phenomena that they have little solid knowledge of. And further, examining suspects requires a very different attitude from what they’re used to. Whereas patients have to be treated in a trustful way, being sceptical is the top priority when dealing with suspects.”

thing he had no influence over. His examiners believed him. When he was a free man again, he explained in detail how he had fooled the psychiatrists.”

Trend In Merckelbach’s view, mistakes like these fit into a wider trend. “In our society, we have the stereotype of the good citizen”, he explains. “We believe that a ‘normal’ person behaves properly and doesn’t break the law. Based on this idea, we conclude that anyone who commits an offence must be crazy. Accordingly, the number of suspects examined by forensic psychologists and psychiatrists in recent years has increased exponentially.

What we’re now witnessing is the ‘pathologising’ of criminal law.” Judge Klip agrees. “Also, I notice that more and more forensic behavioural reports are being written, yet the number of suspects declared to be of unsound mind and sent to a detention unit with obligatory psychiatric treatment remains very small.”

Does this mean that the effects of this ‘pathologising’ are negligible in practice? For Merckelbach, it is clear that the answer is no. While few people are actually declared to be of unsound mind, less severe mental disorders are attributed to many suspects under examination. “The message now is: ‘You’re guilty, but we’ve also discovered that you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder”, he says. “Instead of addressing people’s responsibility, we offer them a story that helps them to excuse their deeds.”

As a result of these shortcomings, expert witnesses are easily led astray by liars and malingerers. Merckelbach: “In my book De Leugenmachine [The Lying Machine], I briefly discuss the case of the Dutch writer Richard Klinkhamer. After he was found to have killed his wife, Klinkhamer was sent to a forensic psychiatric facility, the Pieter Baan Centrum. With tears in his eyes, he explained his deed as the unfortunate eruption of a traumatic childhood experience, some-

15

Debate

Solution Merckelbach and Klip present an intriguing dilemma.

If expert witnesses can’t tell sane from insane, and if judges can’t evaluate the quality of their work, where does that leave us? Is there a way out? Merckelbach’s solution is twofold. “First, we should stop examining large groups of suspects. The majority of people who commit offences are perfectly sane. Only the ‘exceptions to the rule’, so to speak, should be subjected to psychological testing. Second, we need to replace our expert witnesses with scientists. The cases encountered in the courtroom can’t be judged by relying on everyday clinical experience, but by making use of the body of scientific knowledge that has accumulated over the years.”

For judges, too, there is still some work to be done.

“They’ll have to take a more critical stance when questioning expert witnesses”, Merckelbach says.

“They don’t necessarily need to acquire additional expertise for this. The crucial question should be: ‘Who are you and why do you think you’re able to evaluate this case?’ To Klip, this seems to be a reasonable starting point, as long as judges are still able to perform their job properly. “What I find very worrying is that judges are expected to work extremely efficiently. In comparison to other countries, it takes very little time to put someone in jail in the Netherlands. The workload is simply too heavy and this doesn’t contribute to the quality of our criminal justice system.”

André Klip André Klip (1965) studied law in Utrecht, where he worked at the Willem Pompe Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Currently, he is professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Transnational Criminal Law at Maastricht University.

He also works as a judge and is a member of the Standing Committee of Experts in International Immigration, Refugee and Criminal Law. Harald Merckelbach Harald Merckelbach (1959) studied psychology at the University of Utrecht. From 2005 to 2008, he was dean of the Maastricht Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. Along with his work as a professor of Psychology, Merckelbach also publishes widely in numerous magazines. In 2007 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

16

Two UM professors appointed as KNAW members As of 1 June, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has appointed 20 new members. Two of them, Michael Faure and Jim van Os,

are professors at Maastricht University.

Faure, professor of Comparative and International Environmental Law (also professor of Judicial Economics at the

Erasmus University Rotterdam) has joined the Jurisprudence section, while Van Os, professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology, is now part of the Medicine section.

Prizes awarded at the opening of the academic year Tanspenning Governor L.J.P.M Frissen has been awarded the Tanspenning, Maastricht University’s highest medal of distinction,

by Professor Martin Paul, president of the university. Frissen was the Queen’s Commissioner, also known as the Governor, from 2005 to 2011. Working from the conviction that higher education and a strong university are critical for the healthy social, economic and cultural development of Limburg and the Euregion, he proved to be an excellent ambassador for Maastricht University. The medal was awarded on Monday 5 September during the academic ceremony of the opening of the academic year 2011/12. The Tanspenning is named after Dr J.G.H. (Sjeng) Tans, the founder of Maastricht University.

€ 3.2 million for Maastricht University research schools Nineteen graduate research schools will each receive an € 800,000 grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to train young researchers. This year, Maastricht University leads

Edmond Hustinx Science Prize The Edmond Hustinx Science Prize was awarded to Dr Henry Otgaar of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience for his proposal ‘Explaining developmental reversals in false memory research’. The proposal was judged on its innovativeness, originality and practical implications, as well as the productivity of the candidate. The prize consists of a € 15,000 research grant.

Student Award Marieke Vonk and Astrid van Boxtel won the 2011 Student Award for their initiative, the Stichting Mpower Foundation. This organisation aims to improve the living conditions and health of children and youth in Mundri, southern Sudan. The prize consists of a work of art and a € 1000 gift certificate.

the list, with four grants approved for the School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI), the Experimental Psychopathology Research School, the Maastricht University Graduate School for Business and Economics, and NUTRIM’s graduate programme in Metabolism and Chronic Disease. With these grants, the university

Martin Paul and Léon Frissen

P. Frénay, Henry Otgaar and Gerard Mols

Gerard Mols, Marieke Vonk and Astrid van Boxtel

will be able to appoint 16 PhD candidates; four candidates per research school.

Maastricht University has now had five grants approved in total. Earlier, the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre, which is part of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, was also awarded a NWO graduate schools grant.

17

Globalisation

“Historians have always been very bad prophets”

By Annelotte Huiskes

After four years doing research and supervising PhD candidates and postdocs at the European University Institute in Florence, Professor Kiran Klaus Patel decided to relocate to Maastricht University. As of 1 September, he is the new professor of European and Global History and head of the History Department at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Patel was raised in Germany, has lived in the United States and Italy, and has family roots in India. It comes as no surprise, then, that he places great importance on the global perspective of European history. And in his new role, he aims to make this a more visible part of the European Studies programme. “We have to prepare ourselves for a world in which global interactions are becoming more and more important. We need a strong focus on the EU and the past and present of Europe, but this is inconceivable without knowledge of the outside world. Recent initiatives at the faculty, such as the new master’s programme in Globalisation and Development Studies, are already good steps in this direction.”

Transnational Patel specialises in European integration and transnational history. “History has long been framed primarily as national history. It’s only over the last 15 to 20 years that this perspective has been challenged. Comparative and transna-

18

tional approaches complement the more established diplomatic history in analysing links between societies, and European history is a particularly rewarding field to study the ebbs and flows of the various processes that have entangled different societies.”

Cultural Capital Patel’s choice for Maastricht was a conscious one. Particularly appealing was the fact that the Department of History is part of the Arts and Culture as well as the European Studies programme.

“I like this interdisciplinary setup, and I see my work as being at the crossroads of these interests: political and cultural history on the one hand and European studies on the other.”

One of Patel’s current projects is an edited volume on European cultural policy, particularly the EU’s Cultural Capital programme. This is a real point of interest for Maastricht, which is hoping to be made a Capital of Culture in 2018. “The programme was instituted in 1985. One of my main questions is:

why did the EU become active in cultural policy during the 1970s and 1980s, whereas the focus during the 1950s and 1960s had primarily been on economic policy? The Capital of Culture initiative is the EU’s most successful programme in cultural policy today.

The effects are huge, ranging from urban regeneration to awarenessraising of the European dimension at a local level. As a city you have to look at yourself in a European context – what makes you European? That will be the challenge for Maastricht. Moreover, the programme has become an export product: similar initiatives are being taken in Latin America and other parts of the world, and it will be interesting to see how they emulate and appropriate this concept.”

Education While Patel has dedicated much of the last few years to research, at UM a great deal of his time will be devoted to teaching activities. To this end, he is not short on plans: “I’d like to bring in my research on the Cultural Capital

Kiran Klaus Patel

programme by holding seminars and fostering a dialogue on these questions. And I’m keen to start new projects in an area that hasn’t been explored enough so far – that is, situating Europe and the EU institutions in the wider context of other European organisations as well as frameworks beyond Europe, and looking at the differences and mutual influences.

With the student body becoming ever more international, it will be interesting to analyse these issues from several vantage points. In class, I like to give students an active role, and see myself primarily as a facilitator of learning.”

Past – present – future Back to the present. In these times of economic crisis, with EU solidarity being put to the test, can we still learn something from history? Patel: “We certainly can. Sometimes integration has been too much of an end in itself, without looking at the concrete economic and political situation. The symbolic meaning of

Greece being able to join first the European Community and later the Eurozone played a more important role than the country’s economic figures. So we need to take a close look at the negotiations from that time.

Along with political and economic criteria, the negotiations have been shaped by these sorts of cultural factors. When it comes to monetary integration, some actors argued as early as the 1990s that it would lead to the problems that we’re facing at the moment, but these voices remained marginal at the time. Overarching political arguments loomed large, often overruling economic considerations. So in the future we need to get a clear-cut idea of all the motives involved.”

And what will the EU look like in, say, 100 years? “Historians have always been very bad prophets. I feel reluctant to play that role, because we historians are very good at showing that other people who made such predictions were completely wrong.

As Walter Benjamin said: the face of the angel of history is turned backward. Let me say instead what I hope the EU will be. I hope the integration process will go on, that it will concentrate on fields in which integration can make a real difference, and that the EU will be seen as a vital actor in global matters.”

Kiran Klaus Patel (1971) received his PhD in history in 2001. From 2002 to 2007, he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of History at Berlin’s Humboldt University, and in 2006 and 2007 became a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. He then served as a professor at the European University Institute in Florence until 2011.

Patel has also been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a visiting fellow at several other institutions, including the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies.

19

Excellent review

“The students are plucked from our hands”

By Jules Coenegracht

The Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience is on the right track.

Graduates find themselves in research positions at top universities like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge. And according to the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO), the theses produced in the programme are of “international top quality”. We interview the programme director Alexander Sack on the secret behind the success.

“The Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience is a bi-faculty programme offered in collaboration between the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. The programme offers four specialisations: Fundamental Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, and Psychopathology. Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience is a relatively new, highly interdisciplinary science that examines the relationship between the workings of the brain and human behaviour. Human behaviour here refers to all sensory and motor skills, but also to cognitive functions and emotions – in fact, to just about everything that we as human beings can do. Our focus also includes brain disorders such as depression and schizophrenia; this is where the clinical in the programme’s name comes from.”

No fMRI scanner for Descartes Classic disciplines, like philosophy, have long been concerned with the workings of the brain and their consequences for human behaviour. But Descartes didn’t have an fMRI scanner.

“When you put someone in an MRI scanner, you get a very accurate image – with a resolution of one millimetre or better – of the structure of their brain”, says Sack. “With an fMRI – that is, a functional MRI – you use the same apparatus, but you make a sort of film, which shows how the brain activity changes over time when the person lying in the scanner carries out some form of activity; for example, looking at a picture or completing a task.”

20

Alexander Sack

Professor Alexander Sack (1972) studied psychology at Frankfurt University, where he received his PhD in natural sciences in 2002. Last year he received a prestigious European research grant of € 1.4 million for his study into cortical reorganisation and recovery of spatial awareness after parietal stroke.

With compliments from the NVAO The international panel from the NVAO that assessed the programme theses not only examined their quality, but also compared them with theses from the regular, one-year master’s programme in Cognitive Neurosciences. The panellists were blinded, meaning they were not informed of which thesis was from which programme. They then made a single ranking of all the theses together. “I wasn’t fully sure that the theses from the research master’s would stand out quite so much”, says Sack. “You think: well, it’s a two-year programme, which is so much more costly, and takes so much energy – they must be better. But the theses from the control group came from an exceptionally good programme that uses the same infrastructure. Also, with an international panel you can never be quite sure how you’re doing compared to the institutions that the panellists come from.” But the result was near enough to perfect: the best five theses were all from the research master’s.

In fact, the upper half of the ranking consisted almost exclusively of research master’s theses. And the panellists were highly complimentary: “Yes, they were very impressed. They said that if someone with that sort of background were to apply to them, they’d be more than welcome. Naturally, something like that is nice to hear.”

Open working environment Graduates of the programme indeed seem to be popular.

“I have a student here who’s still working on his thesis, but he’s already received a PhD offer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The students are effectively being plucked from our hands.” So what is it that makes this such a top programme internationally? “If you want to do top research in cognitive neuroscience – and I mean truly top, the world top – then you need a certain infrastructure. You need MRI scanners, which cost several million euros. You need to maintain those scanners, which costs hundreds of thousands of euros per year. You need highly qualified technical staff.

And of course you need top researchers who can actually make use of this infrastructure. Not many institutes worldwide have all that. But we do here in Maastricht. We’ve got researchers of world renown, and an exceptionally good working environment. That’s perhaps the most important thing: We have a very cooperative and open atmosphere.

Students enjoy direct contact with top researchers and professors. Thanks to Problem-Based Learning they work in very small groups together with these top researchers right from the outset. Also, they immediately get a practical introduction to things like working with an fMRI scanner. It’s not everywhere that you find such an open working environment.

Sometimes scientists are more guarded, or you have to deal with super-egos. We don’t have that here. Students and staff seem to find the working environment in Maastricht so positive that – despite offers from Stanford, Harvard and MIT – they want to stay here.”

Alexander Paunov

“Nine months just doing research” Alexander Paunov (25) was born and raised in Bulgaria. After studying psychology and economics at Tufts University in Boston, he returned to his native country. “I spent a year working in the business sector, but I didn’t enjoy it. I realised that I wanted to be involved in science.” Paunov knew that he wanted to study cognitive neuroscience and “in this field there aren’t so many good centres. Maastricht is one of the best, not only in Europe, but also worldwide.” Having applied for the Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, he found that being admitted was not easy; for instance, he had to write a 45-minute essay on a topic not announced in advance.

Paunov is now about to complete his thesis, which examines the question of what happens in our brains in social interaction in a competitive context. “You spend nine months just doing research.

That’s great for learning hands-on what it is to be a researcher. You also get a great deal of freedom in organising your research: you can do it here in Maastricht or somewhere else; you can choose your own topic or be part of a larger research project. And because the Maastricht professors have such a good name worldwide, you can get an internship place anywhere.” When he finishes his thesis, Paunov will return to Boston, where he has been offered a PhD position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

21

Professor and student

Marja van Dieijen-Visser

Leo Jacobs and Alma Mingels

Professor Marja van Dieijen-Visser and students Leo Jacobs and Alma Mingels

By Graziella Runchina

Playing sports and getting enough exercise are good for our health – no-one will disagree with that. But according to findings by PhD candidates Alma Mingels and Leo Jacobs, strenuous exercise can in some cases be bad for the heart. “We want to gain insight into the risk of heart damage due to exertion, and we hope to find biomarkers that we can use to detect this in the blood. The aim, in time, is to adjust the training regimes of athletes or the intensity of exercise to the risks.”

What effect does extreme exertion have on the heart muscle? And can heart damage due to strenuous exercise be predicted, or better yet, avoided? For the last four years, these are the sorts of questions that Mingels and Jacobs have been asking in the research line Biomarkers of Heart Damage at the Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC). They were supervised by Professor Marja van Dieijen-Visser, PhD, head of the MUMC’s Clinical Chemistry Laboratory. This was the first time that Van Dieijen-Visser had supervised a double PhD defence.

22

Sensitive measurement methods “In recent years, highly sensitive measurement methods have been developed that can identify very low blood concentrations of troponin, a protein from the heart muscle”, explains Mingels. “With this technique, which we validated in collaboration with industry partners, we can identify miniscule damage to the heart. This brings to light damage that we’ve never been able to trace before.”

Jacobs: “Our research now shows that in the case of

extreme exertion – for example, if you run a marathon – proteins (troponin) can be identified in the bloodstream that are normally only present in the heart.

The extent of these cardiac proteins that we find in the blood is an indicator of damage to the heart, and is in fact comparable with the concentrations that are measured after a mild heart attack.”

Close collaboration “We worked closely throughout the entire PhD programme”, says Van Dieijen-Visser. “The research team met at least once a week to discuss the findings.

Although Leo and Alma each did their own research projects within the same research line, they always had the same goal in mind.” Van Dieijen-Visser enjoys passing on scientific research skills to young, ambitious people, and also preparing them for the PhD defence in terms of subject matter. “The fact that I was supervising a double doctorate this time was extra special. It was nice to see that both of them have very different characters: although they both did outstanding research, their perspectives were very different. Alma focuses on improving and extending the research, the harder the better, while Leo is always keen to see the big picture: why are we doing this and what benefits will it have? All in all they complemented each other nicely.”

For the PhD candidates themselves, being able to attend conferences and take courses together was a great advantage. “This meant we got a lot of support

from one another”, says Jacobs. “We were each other’s sounding board, because we always knew exactly what the other was doing.”

Unclear effects “Not enough is yet known about the effects of physical exertion due to intense exercise or strenuous sports”, explains Van Dieijen-Visser by way of background. “The message in 2011 is that getting enough exercise and playing sports has a positive effect on our health. No-one would disagree with that, and there’s also plenty of scientific evidence for it. But – and herein lies the key to this research – recent years have shown that intensive exercise, certainly in untrained people and people with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, can in fact cause heart damage.”

However, a great deal of uncertainty remains about the significance of these increased concentrations of cardiac protein in the blood after extreme exertion.

“And so there are still many unanswered questions”, says Van Dieijen-Visser. “One of the questions that we

want to answer in the near future concerns the longer term effects of heart muscle damage due to extreme and less extreme exertion. Is the damage reversible?

Can the heart muscle still recover?”

The researchers hope to find answers to these questions as the project goes on. Mingels and Jacobs are now passing on the torch to new PhD candidates funded by the De Weijerhorst Foundation, which donated the sum of € 1,295,000 to the project.

Mingels and Jacobs will follow the ongoing research from the sidelines. “Leo and I both recently started our new jobs as trainee clinical chemists”, says Mingels. “This will give us a better idea of troponin in practice.”

Mouse heart cells Van Dieijen-Visser: “In the years to come we’ll focus specifically on older people – both trained and untrained – after extreme and less extreme exertion.

We also intend to expose cultured mouse heart cells to different stimuli in order to study how and when the cardiac proteins are released, and we’ll look at whether the damage to the heart is reversible. We’re keen to use heart-specific biomarkers to identify this.”

According to the two PhD candidates, part of the appeal of troponin is that its measurement has a high predictive value. “Simply put, this means that by doing a non-invasive, relatively cheap blood test we can get an idea of the chances that someone will have a heart attack in the future.”

Marja van Dieijen-Visser Marja van Dieijen-Visser (1954) is professor of Clinical Chemistry and director of the Laboratory Unit of the Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC). She supervised the PhD research of Leo Jacobs and Alma Mingels within her research line, Biomarkers of Heart Damage.

Leo Jacobs Leo Jacobs (1980) studied Molecular Life Sciences at the Catholic University of Nijmegen and will defend his PhD dissertation this autumn. He has since started his clinical chemistry traineeship at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in ’s Hertogenbosch.

Alma Mingels Alma Mingels (1981) studied Biomedical Technology at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She also did her PhD research at the MUMC and will defend her dissertation this autumn. She is now doing her clinical chemistry traineeship at the MUMC. The PhD defence will take place on 3 February 2012.

23

International

Mark Stout and Teun Dekker

“You get value for money in Maastricht”

By Graziella Runchina

More and more students from the UK are opting for Maastricht University (UM).

Combined with the highly regarded international education on offer at UM, the lower tuition fees in the Netherlands mean that Dutch universities – and thus also Maastricht – are becoming increasingly popular among British students.

24

The various UM faculties have already received over 400 registrations for the new academic year, according to Teun Dekker and Mark Stout. As well as being vice deans of the University College Maastricht (UCM), Dekker and Stout are members of the UK Country Team, which is responsible for recruiting prospective English students.

“About three years ago we observed that there were too few places at British universities for potential students”, explains Stout. “For us at UM, that was a great opportunity to spring into action. Maastricht is just a few hours from London, and since the majority of UM bachelor’s and master’s programmes are in English, there’s no language barrier to deal with. Studying in the Netherlands is also much cheaper than in England, where students pay three to four times more in tuition fees.”

Tempting “So we figured that we had a lot of plus points to tempt English students to choose UM”, Stout continues. “We then approached the heads of a number of English high schools to discuss our plans, and the UK Country Team visited around 25 high schools in England to draw attention to UM. This led straight away to a considerable number of applications.”

And this “invasion” has not gone unnoticed. On the contrary: UM’s promotion campaign led to a storm of media attention in England. “Just about every serious English-language newspaper ran a story on the exodus of English students to Maastricht”, says Dekker. “But also the BBC, TV Tokyo and even the New York Times came after an explanation as well.”

International appeal Problem-Based Learning – the methodology that makes UM so unique –

appears to be one of Maastricht’s key draw cards. At least, this is what Dekker and Stout hear from many English students who have studied at UM in recent years. Stout: “The Anglo-Saxon study culture usually involves mass lectures with little personal attention.

What we do in Maastricht in our small tutorial groups is precisely the opposite. This is why the ‘discussion culture’ so native to England also fits well with the style of education on offer at UM. And the average English student is attracted by the international appeal that Maastricht has built up over the past decades, as well as the prospect of collaboration with students from other cultures.”

Concern All these advantages, according to Dekker and Stout, stand UM in good stead for the future. “You get value for your money in Maastricht, you might say. This is something that our English students were already keen on, but that now also appeals to their parents”, says Dekker. “From the interviews with the school heads, it became clear that many parents were concerned about their children falling into debt during their studies in England due to the high tuition fees.

Another concern was that their talented children might not be able to get a place at a university in their own country. Here at UM, we can put an end to those concerns.”

On 18 November, the day before UM’s general open day, the UK Country Team will organise an information day to give study advisers from England a first hand look at what UM has to offer.

The UK Country Team will also host a Parent/Student Dinner on the Open Day, giving prospective UK students and their parents the opportunity to meet and share ideas with current UK students studying in Maastricht.

Theresa Bullock

PBL really works!

“The Dutch education system is very different from the way I was taught in the UK. Here the assessment seems to be on overall participation, and the style of teaching makes you a lot more independent as a student. The PBL system really works. It prepares you for work in the real world.

“The tuition fees are definitely a big factor in the growing number of UK students in Maastricht. But I think it’s also the fact Maastricht is so close to the UK, and that UK students are able to get funding from the Dutch government, similar to what they would get in the UK. The university has a general appeal because it’s in the heart of Europe, surrounded by different cultures. You get high-quality education combined with the enriched experience of studying on the continent, at an affordable price.”

Theresa Bullock (19), first-year bachelor’s student, Knowledge Engineering.

Costs were a huge issue “The forensics master’s was the only programme I found that had this mix of subjects.

Doing this master’s in the UK would have cost me four times as much, so the costs were also a huge issue. Tuition fees in the UK are increasing without the teaching quality improving.

“I don’t like the hierarchal education system in the UK. Here everything’s more relaxed, more open, less competitive. This system is more conducive to getting the results that you deserve. I’ve got a lot more out of it than I did in four years in England.

“When I started my undergraduate degree, it didn’t cross my mind that I could study in Europe. It’s not really done. If European universities market themselves well at UK colleges, there’ll be loads of people coming over.”

Alice Tregunna (23), master’s student, Forensics, Criminology & Law and Globalisation & Law.

25

Off the job

Wiebe Bijker

Beekeeper Bijker

By Femke Kools

When his wife discovered that the name Bijker is Old Dutch for “beekeeper”, Professor Wiebe Bijker, PhD, decided to take a beekeeping course. At his inaugural lecture in 1995 he was presented with a small beehive, and the professor of Technology and Society at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has been cultivating his hobby ever since.

This year, his four beehives produced around 70 kilos of honey. Read on for the relationship between the “Dittrich colony” and the Delta Plan.

One afternoon in June 2010, Bijker received a phone call from the former UM president, Karl Dittrich. “There was a large swarm of bees in a tree in his garden and he knew I was a beekeeper. I went over straight away armed with a wicker basket. You give the branch a hit and hope that the

26

queen, which is surrounded by thousands of bees, falls into your basket. If you’re lucky, all the worker bees attach themselves to the queen and you have a whole colony to put into an empty hive. It worked, and the ‘Dittrich colony’ has lived in one of my four hives ever since. It’s an exceptionally strong

colony, the biggest I have at the moment. It saved my Bijkerij, as I call it, because I’d just had a bad winter and almost all my bees had died.”

Four colonies In the corner of Bijker’s garden in Eijsden, four beehives stand on a plat-

form. Each hive harbours one queen with her colony, an average of 60,000 bees. Bee colonies are complicated and highly efficient; for instance, whenever the lid of their hive is open they keep the hive draught-free by tightly sealing the joins. In the mornings, the scouts look for plants that are in bloom and perform a dance that tells their fellow bees which direction to fly in and whether it is near or far. With their feet, their colleagues can then test whether they’ve got the right plant. The fact that they all fly at once at blooming clovers, for example, means they are able to pollinate the plants highly efficiently. “A clover gets nothing out of it if a single insect has just returned from an apple blossom. It’s precisely the fact that the bees all fly together at a single plant species that makes them so effective.”

Ancestors And there’s no shortage of fun facts like these about bees and the practice of beekeeping, which has been around since 4000BC. “I find it really fascinating and enjoyable to be involved in a tradition like this”, says Bijker. “One of my ancestors must also have been a beekeeper, because of the name, but I’m not sure exactly what that’s about. I mainly do it because it gets me in touch with nature and it’s nice to do something completely different to my work.”

Einstein On a larger scale, he has his concerns as well. “Over the last few years more bees than usual have been dying in the winter, and sometimes you find your hive completely empty, which is very strange. They can get sick, or have too little to eat in the winter, but that there’s sometimes no trace of a whole colony makes it very strange and worrying.”

Einstein would have said that if the bees are dying out, four years later the same fate will befall man.

“I think that’s a bit dramatic. Bees are crucial to our ecosystem, but not all plants depend on them. And beyond beekeeping there are also still wild bees.”

Some beekeepers are calling for a Delta Plan to save the bee population.

Bijker gets the hint and laughs: “That’s basically a Dutch metaphor for a big, comprehensive plan that offers an all-round solution. My father was indeed a professor of coastal engineering, and so was directly involved in the Delta Plan for the Dutch

coast. But for a Delta Plan for bees far more research is needed, and while I admit that it sometimes tickles my research heart, I’ve no intentions of doing it. I like having a hobby and I don’t have the time to do something like that properly.”

Nothing better Bijker’s professorship in Technology and Society represents the culmination of his studies in physics and philosophy as well as his passion for teaching. “There’s nothing better. My research ranges from nanotechnology and development cooperation to hydraulic engineering. In this latter field I come across many of my father’s former students, and I’m now supervising a PhD project together with his successor.” But as for a relationship between his beekeeping and his professorship, or his research field and a bee colony: “That’s a bit far-fetched.”

Perhaps technology will one day take over the work of bees?

“That I don’t believe at all. The scale of the work that bees do in agriculture is technologically irreplaceable.”

Bijker’s love and enthusiasm for his bee colonies is evident. He talks about the time he chased after a swarm to keep them for the Bijkerij, about the honey extractors and more. And about the emotional bond with his bees. “You can’t pet them.

But a few years ago when my colonies were hit by American foulbrood – a bee disease similar to bird flu that sees your entire setup cleared out by men in white coats – I was miserable.

I really missed them when they were gone and the garden was so quiet.”

27

UM launches International Classroom programme

To promote interaction between students of different nationalities, the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics (SBE) launched the International Classroom Development programme in September 2011. The aim of the programme is to prepare students for the international labour market, in which (particularly on the academic level) they will increasingly have to work in teams composed of various different nationalities.

As of the academic year 2011/12, firstyear bachelor’s students at SBE will be assigned various tasks aimed at improving their ability to cooperate with

students from different national backgrounds. In later years, modules are expected to be developed that lecturers can apply in existing courses. Special attention will be paid to the connection with professional practice. According to the programme coordinator, Wim Swaan, “In Problem-Based Learning, students continuously collaborate in small groups and effective interaction is thus essential. Graduates of Maastricht University have been found to perform very well on the labour market in terms of social and team skills, both nationally and internationally. This programme further reinforces our students’ skills on the international labour market.”

Prof. Hildegard Schneider appointed dean of the Faculty of Law The Executive Board has appointed Prof.

Hildegard Schneider as the new Dean of the Faculty of Law. The four-year appointment takes effect from 1 September. “As it happens, I will have been employed by Maastricht University for exactly 25 years on that day,” Schneider points out.

Hildegard Schneider succeeds Prof. Aalt Willem Heringa. He was Dean of the Law faculty for eight years. Schneider (born in 1955 in Rottweil, Germany) studied Law, Political Sciences and Art History in Freiburg, London, Paris and Münster.

Maastricht University awarded

Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence grants 28

Schneider’s UM career began in 1986 as lecturer in European Law. In 1995 she obtained her Ph.D. at UM with research into the mutual recognition of diplomas and professional qualifications in the EU. In 2000 she was appointed to the Jean Monnet Chair for European Migration Law. Schneider works as a researcher with the Maastricht Centre for European Law and is a member of the Ius Commune research school. She also teaches and coordinates various programmes at the Faculty of Law.

With four grants, Maastricht University did extremely well in the annual grant rounds of the Jean Monnet Programme.

The programme aims to promote education, research and reflection on European integration and to support institutions working in this field. The major prize is a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence grant, which saw € 220,000 awarded to the Faculty of Arts and

Hildegard Schneider

Social Sciences. The centre of excellence will be named the Maastricht Centre for European Administrative Governance and coordinated by professors Thomas Christiansen and Sophie Vanhoonacker, both of whom hold a Jean Monnet Chair.

New member of the Maastricht University Supervisory Board Dr Jeroen Kremers, Vice Chair of the Managing Board and Chief Risk Officer of the Royal Bank of Scotland NV, was appointed to the Maastricht University Supervisory Board as of 1 July 2011.

Kremers succeeds Dick Sluimers, who had been a board member since 1 May 2008 but resigned to accept a supervisory role with the IFRS Foundation.

Before taking up his role with the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2009, initially as Executive and Head of Global Country Risk, Kremers was a member of the Managing Board and Head of Group Public Affairs at ABN AMRO. Prior to this, he held various positions with the IMF and the Finance Ministry. Until recently, Kremers also chaired the Board of the Tinbergen Institute.

Jeroen Kremers

The positive effects of XTC Professor Jan Ramaekers and Dr Kim Kuypers from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN) have been awarded a € 200,000 NWO grant, which they will use to study the effects of ecstasy (XTC) in order to better understand habitual drug use. One of their objectives is to identify the neurological mechanisms that underlie the positive behavioural effects associated with XTC.

Most XTC research tends to focus on the negative cognitive effects of the drug, such as impaired memory performance. To date, virtually no research has been conducted on the positive, prosocial effects of XTC use such as empathy, energy and euphoria.

They expect to see differences in the extent to which the positive effects of

XTC use are genetically predetermined.

Those who experience very positive effects also tend to experience a stronger comedown when the drug wears off. To prevent these feelings of depression and stimulate prosocial feelings, such people are more likely to become repeat users.

More reliable

early prediction of Alzheimer’s New evidence has been found that Alzheimer’s can be more reliably predicted by examining different areas of the brain, and in particular the parietal lobe, responsible for spatial awareness.

In the past, studies on Alzheimer’s have focused mainly on the medial temporal cortex. This part of the brain plays an important role in explicit memory, but

is not sufficiently reliable for diagnosing the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Heidi Jacobs, a PhD candidate at Maastricht University, studied changes in the parietal lobe in relation to early Alzheimer’s diagnostics. She was awarded the highest distinction for her PhD dissertation ‘Parietal Matters in Early Alzheimer’s Disease’.

29

Social media

Tom van Laer

“Companies would do better to apologise.”

By Margot Krijnen

Dr Tom van Laer earned his PhD from Maastricht University on how companies can best respond to negative reviews in social media.

Van Laer starts with a blog story on American Airlines.

“This airline flies regularly between London and Chicago. In 2008, two years after Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth came out, there were only five passengers on one of these flights. American Airlines decided to fly anyway. Environmentalists found this ridiculous: using tons of kerosene when the same flight would depart one hour later with enough seats available. They posted the story on the internet and thousands of people commented on the company’s irresponsible behaviour. Subsequently, their sales figures collapsed. The momentum was awful – the whole world was focused on environmental issues and the company should have cancelled

30

the flight. They should have known the clients would immediately penalise them. And once it happened, they should have responded adequately. ” Interaction This is just one of many stories. Countless negative reviews circulate all over the internet. “The internet has drastically changed the interaction between companies and consumers”, says Van Laer. “150 years ago, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe played an important role in galvanising public opinion against slavery. That was a novel written by one individual. Can you imagine the impact of a medium

as powerful as the internet? In the past 150 years, communication has mostly been one-sided, from the company to the customer. Today, the power of the narrative has returned as consumers get to be part of the conversation. Marketing communication has become symmetrical. Lots of internet users update their profile pages on Facebook, MySpace or other social media sites. Whether in the form of blogs or profile pages, they share written stories or photos and videos about themselves and their experiences, and narratives have the power to change our beliefs.”

Transportation “The phenomenon of transportation, or mentally entering a narrative, plays a crucial role in persuasion by stories. Here’s why. People find stories entertaining for two reasons: First, they imagine the events the main character experiences. Second, they feel for the character. In 1993, Professor Richard Gerrig of Yale University published research in which he observed that people who find reading novels entertaining are changed by their reading experience. Readers who become engrossed in the story tend to accept the story as true, and the beliefs and behaviours that the characters exhibit as good. Reviews on the internet have exactly that kind of power. They can heavily influence people’s opinions on products, companies and even people.”

Employees Could company employees who have to respond to the internet comments also be transported by the stories?

Van Laer: “After the global financial crisis set in, many people posted stories about how their bankers did not pay enough attention to them. In these stories, the customer is the main character and the banker is the bad guy. Naturally, bankers are not easily transported into such a story. Instead, their first reaction is to dis-

pute the story and claim to indeed be oriented towards the client. I wondered whether it might be possible to help bankers become transported by focusing their attention in the story on the customer’s interest.

You can redirect people’s focus by priming them with words. I took a dozen words, including compassion, moved, soft-hearted, sympathy, tender and warm, and asked a group of bankers from a large financial institution to find these words in a word-search puzzle. I then presented them with a story about a client’s negative experience with a bank, along with the question of who was at fault. While bankers who hadn’t done the word-search puzzle laid the blame and responsibility primarily with the client, those who had done the puzzle tended to see themselves as more at fault. So from my research, it appears that you can transport people

in a relatively simple manner. Although bankers are the bad guys in many stories, even they can be transported.”

Apologies So how can companies best respond to bad reviews, and who should do so? “Companies are used to arguing their case. If you submit a complaint, you get an explanation in return. But if there’s one thing complaining consumers don’t want to hear, it’s a dry list of facts.

People who vent their emotions on the internet want those emotions to be accepted. They want emotional relief. The best thing is to allow for that emotion.

Therefore, companies would do better to issue an apology and then tell the story from their perspective.

Because an excuse in itself indicates that you’re showing emotion; that you’re allowing for the other person’s emotion. Whether a company is at fault or not, you can always apologise for what the customer is going through. And it’s better when this story is told by someone from the shop floor, instead of the company’s spokesperson. People find a response from a spokesperson cheap. Moreover, a spokesperson is trained to present statements and arguments, whereas a front-line employee – the real service employee – is just an ordinary person who’s in direct contact with the customers. That employee can put a human face on the story. In fact, social media are about people sharing stories.”

Tom van Laer (1983) studied Business Communication Research and International Business Communication, and received a Master of Arts from the University of Nijmegen.

From 2008, he was a doctoral candidate at the UM School of Business and Economics, where he lectured on responsible employee behaviour. This autumn, he will join the ESCP Europe Business School as an assistant professor on the Paris campus.

31

From Maastricht to Milan

By Jolien Linssen

It may seem like a big step from Maastricht University’s (UM) School of Business and Economics to the Instituto Marangoni in Milan, Italy’s famous fashion and design school. But for the now 29-year-old Alexia van Engelen, it was the only logical path to take. And as the latest Amsterdam International Fashion Week has shown, she made the right choice. With models parading down an underwater catwalk, Van Engelen’s designer label Sage and Ivy proved to be one of the event’s most striking runway shows. Not bad for a brand that was launched just 18 months ago.

“It was a way to present my source of inspiration to the audience”, Van Engelen says of the idea behind the show. “All the pieces in the collection are based on water – that is, on the effects water can have when it reflects a print, for instance, or turns colour pigments into gradients. Those impressions are what I wanted to translate.” The result: a spring/summer 2012 collection dominated by luxurious, transparent fabrics in

Alexia van Engelen

32

pastel colours and white. Above all, the collection breathes femininity – which of course is no coincidence for a designer who cites the woman as her muse.

Yet as the preparations for the show made clear, not everything can be controlled. “Though we requested the permits to build a runway in the pond in good time, the city council didn’t issue them until a week and a half before the show”, Van Engelen explains.

“That was very exciting indeed.”

On the day itself, however, even the weather gods were willing to cooperate. Every piece just seemed to fall into place: “For me, the show at the Amsterdam International Fashion Week has been my best experience to date. Many journalists, bloggers and stylists made appearances and the responses were extremely positive. I really got the opportunity to leave my mark.”

Brains and beauty Although Sage and Ivy is still a relatively young brand, Van Engelen’s ambition to make it in the world of fashion dates back to her childhood.

“My mother used to work as a public relations officer for a big clothing label”, she says. “As a little girl, I saw glimpses of runway shows and photo shoots. My mother’s enthusiasm was contagious. So I decided that later on, I was going to work in the fashion industry too.”

But childhood dreams can be easily forgotten, or overruled by practical considerations. “When it was about time to choose a study programme, my parents advised me to go in a direction that would always enable me to find a job. So I went to UM to study International Business. At the same time, I made a deal with my parents: if I managed to graduate within four years, I would then enrol in a creative programme.”

And so she did. After four years of maths, bookkeeping, reading and writing, Van Engelen plunged into a new world at the Istituto Marangoni.

“It was great”, she recalls. “In Milan, it’s all about working with your hands; you’re expected to draw, make sewing patterns, stitch your designs together and make fashion collages.

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

It was totally different from how I used to work in Maastricht.”

Working 24/7 Now, as the founder and designer of Sage and Ivy, Van Engelen is glad she followed her parents’ advice. “Creating the collection is one thing,” she says, “but taking care of the production process, making financial plans and communicating with clients is another.

At UM, I learned to think in terms of the big picture.”

And a big picture it is, for the goals that she has set for herself are high.

Along with creating aesthetically challenging designs, Van Engelen aims to promote social and environmental awareness. Each season, Sage and Ivy donates a share of the revenues of a specific collection item to a project for children in need of help. Moreover, the label strives to work with eco-friendly

materials. “Not all the fabrics are ready to be eco-certified yet, but all sorts of developments are going on, which is interesting. Customers will ultimately judge a piece by its image and look, but the fact that it’s produced in a sustainable manner just adds that extra dimension.”

consumes most of my time, but I just love what I’m doing.” Luckily, Van Engelen’s success at the Amsterdam International Fashion Week has shown that hard work pays off. Once you set out to realise your dream, even walking on water is possible.

The 29-year-old seems to have no problems combining her creative

talent with an ambitious, yet responsible, way of doing business. “But the step from being an employee to an employer was huge”, she admits.

“Now that I’m heading a team of four people, I’ve come to realise how comfortable it is to work for a boss. There are many risks to owning a company.”

Still, she wouldn’t change a thing.

“Starting my own label was a longtime dream. After holding several sales and marketing positions, I felt that it was now or never. My work

33

Cambridge: state-of-the-art research by UM alumni

By Margot Krijnen

Alum Niko Kriegeskorte (PhD, 2004) leads a research group on visual object recognition at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. Recently, this same unit welcomed alum Marieke Mur (PhD, 2011), who was awarded the prestigious Rubicon grant to continue her research outside the Netherlands.

When you see a cat, you see a cat, not a dog. And when you see the face of an acquaintance, you recognise who it is among the thousands of faces you know – despite considerable variation in view, lighting, facial expression, hairstyle and context.

Object recognition feels effortless and natural. But how do our brains accomplish it? Kriegeskorte and Mur investigate the brain processes that underlie the recognition of visual objects: cars, houses, chairs, animals and faces. “We know quite a bit about these processes in the brain,” explains Mur, “but there’s a lot more to find out. For example, what happens when you focus your attention on

34

a certain object feature, like its colour.

Imagine you’re lost in the woods and you’re hungry. You start looking for food by focusing on colour, to find blueberries for example. This focus on certain object characteristics allows you to reach a specific goal more easily. Information about the brain processes that give rise to this ability can help us understand the workings of the mind with regard to attention and focus. Ultimately, that may lead to a better understanding of attention-deficit disorders. This is what I’ll be concentrating on during my time in Cambridge: object perception, attention and goal-oriented behaviour.”

Understanding the brain “Recognising objects feels effortless,” says Kriegeskorte, “but it requires a complicated computational process in the brain. Computer engineers can make computers play chess and prove mathematical theorems better than humans, but replicating human-level object recognition in computers is a tough engineering challenge. In my group, we study how objects are represented by populations of neurons in what’s called a combinatorial

population code. In contrast to the grandmother-cell theory, according to which a single neuron can represent a particular real-world object, combinatorial coding means that hundreds of thousands of neurons jointly represent a thing in the world, such as your grandmother. We do basic research that has long-term relevance to computer vision as well as the treatment of brain disorders like object agnosia (loss of ability to recognise objects), prosopagnosia (face blindness) and autism.”

International careers In 2004, the year he earned his PhD from Maastricht University (UM), Kriegeskorte became a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. “While I was there, Marieke Mur emailed me, asking if she could do an internship with me.

She wrote her MA thesis with me, which worked out very well.

And eventually she came back for her PhD work as well. We were a very good team. We ended up doing six ambitious projects together, and coauthoring the corresponding papers.

Marieke could have gone anywhere

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

Nico Kriegeskorte and Marieke Mur

for her postdoc, but I’m happy she came to Cambridge. She’ll be working with my colleague and collaborator, John Duncan, who is highly regarded in this field.”

Mur adds: “My supervisor at UM, Rainer Goebel, had been working with Niko for many years and he suggested I contact him. Niko and I work very well together and I’ve learnt a lot from him. Now, I’ll take my research in a slightly different direction by working with John Duncan’s ‘Attention’ group. But it’s great that Niko is still around. We can continue working on our joint projects.”

Maastricht From 2000 until 2003, Kriegeskorte worked on his dissertation at UM. “I moved from the Frankfurt Max Planck Institute for Brain Research to UM with my PhD adviser Rainer Goebel, when he became a professor in Maastricht. It was a great experience – we were a young and dynamic team and a group of close friends. The facili-

ties were great and the scientific and social environment was extraordinary.

I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Cologne, which is a large metropolitan university with 50,000 students. Maastricht was an entirely different experience. Much smaller, for one thing. At UM, you felt more taken care of. And the department atmosphere was very friendly. To me, Maastricht felt like an almost unreal perfect little world. I loved it!”

Network Mur graduated from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience before starting her PhD there. Was she encouraged to go into research during her studies? “Very much so. Our faculty is definitely research oriented.

You’re confronted with proper scientific articles at an early stage in the curriculum and then, in the second year, you start conducting your own research and go through the entire research process. Everybody loved that and realised early on that research might be an interesting option

for the future. Also, the faculty has a great academic network. If it hadn’t been for that network, I’d probably never have met Niko. Creating and maintaining a network is important, and I believe that alumni can play an important role there. We can help each other, provide information about opportunities or even just set an example of the types of careers that are open to you. Current students will absolutely benefit from UM’s ever-expanding alumni network.”

The Rubicon programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) encourages talented researchers to dedicate themselves to a career in research. Rubicon offers recent PhD graduates the chance to spend up to two years at a top research institution outside the Netherlands.

35

University Fund

University Fund’s success with Named Funds

By Jos Cortenraad

With the introduction of Named Funds, the Limburg University Fund/SWOL has hit the target. In less than

a year’s time, eight funds of varying sizes have been established through which individuals and companies support a specific goal of Maastricht University (UM), be it in education or research. These funds range

from a few thousand euros up to € 1.5 million. According to the director, Jos Kievits, it’s a promising start.

Jos Kievits

Over two years have passed since Kievits took over the Limburg University Fund/SWOL, the 46-year-old foundation that raises money for UM research and special education projects.

“We exist by the grace of donations”, he says. “Keeping in mind that less than 3% of the donations made across the Netherlands go to an educational institute and the economy isn’t exactly cooperating, you can imagine that it’s hard work. It’s a question of striking the right chord and talking with many people. With the Named Funds we’ve apparently struck that chord.”

Personal Provided that it fits with SWOL’s objectives and regulations, donors can set up a fund in their own name and help decide where the money will go.

“The advantage of a Named Fund is that donors can stay close to their

36

money. A good example is the Samana Fund, in which the therapist Ans Samana (86) gave € 150,000 for research on problems related to musicians’ posture. So she’ll get to see scientific research into a method that she developed herself.”

Also new is the Coen Hemker Fund, in the area of cardiovascular research, and the Canon–Océ Fund, which is currently being set up. Thanks to the latter, € 400,000 will be made available to fund a professorial chair. “It’s in examples like this that you see the business sector and academia growing together. As in the Entrepreneurship Fund, which was established recently to promote entrepreneurship at UM, and which we think will bear real fruit in the future.”

Noble goal

To date, university funds – not just in Maastricht, but also elsewhere in the Netherlands – are still not yet widely known. “Neither among individuals nor entrepreneurs. In contrast to the US, for example, not much money is donated to educational institutes here. This despite the fact that helping science and education to reach a higher plane is a genuinely noble goal.”

Donations to the Named Funds enjoy all the usual benefits, including being tax deductible. “The University Fund is recognised as an Institution for General Benefit (ANBI). We also charge very low administration fees, meaning that every cent is guaranteed to go towards a UM goal of the donor’s choice.”

OTTO Work Force gets on board in logistics programme

By Jos Cortenraad It’s not only among students that Global Supply Chain Management and Change, Maastricht University’s (UM) new master’s programme in Venlo, is enjoying popularity.

Companies like OTTO Work Force are now getting on board to offer scholarships, thus indirectly investing in well-trained future employees.

“Employees for ourselves or our clients”, agrees Frank van Gool, the director of OTTO Work Force.

A secondment agency based in Venray (Limburg), OTTO Work Force this year funded four scholarships

worth € 2500 each. “We work for most of the large logistics service providers and distributors in the Netherlands.

They have a growing need for highly educated people, and the coming years will only see this demand increase due to the ageing population.

UM’s new master’s programme fits nicely with the developments on the European labour market. It’s internationally oriented, and we’re glad to be making a contribution to that. Also, as a fellow Limburg organisation we feel closely linked with UM.”

International The scho larships are earmarked for Polish students. “OTTO Work Force is an international secondment agency.

Along with in the Netherlands and Germany, we’re very active in Poland”, explains Van Gool. “At present we have about 3500 temp workers there. And we also bring many Polish workers to the Netherlands. These usually have somewhat lower education levels, but our clients are increasingly asking for more highly educated people. There’s no shortage of them in Poland, and many are still studying at university. So we’re giving a number of young people the chance to follow this master’s programme and thus to further develop as individuals and as professionals.”

The intention, naturally, is that these students will then stay in the Netherlands. “It’s not a must, but it may happen. I think that in the coming years, the European labour market will become more international. We need people from eastern Europe if we want to stop our economy from running into trouble with

Frank van Gool

the ageing population. At least, if we want the Dutch economy to keep growing. Incidentally, in the future we also want to fund scholarships for students of other nationalities.

For example, from Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, where we’re now entering the market.”

OTTO Work Force is based in Venray and puts around 10,000 temporary staff to work each day, mainly in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. Last year the company’s turnover was € 135 million; the aim for 2011 is € 185 million.

New thesis prize: Dr Jan Huynen Award The Dr Jan Huynen Award for Life Sciences & Marketing has been awarded for the first time. This year’s recipient is Tim Hendrikx, for his master’s thesis on the role of the Cyp27 protein in preventing liver inflammation. The jury, consisting of representatives from Maastricht University (UM), Hasselt University and the regional business sector, praised the innovative character of

the thesis. Hendrikx discovered that the Cyp27 protein can play a key role in combating the accumulation of fat in the liver. Various aspects of his research have already been used in patent applications, in the hope of developing new methods to identify the accumulation of fat in the liver at an early stage in order to prevent liver failure. Hendrikx will continue this promising line of research at

UM’s NUTRIM research institute.

The aim of this award, launched in collaboration between UM and Dr Jan Huynen, is to encourage talented students to establish links between marketing and the life sciences.

Huynen is an entrepreneur and director of property developer Sogecom BV. The prize consists of a lump sum of € 3000, and will be awarded each year for five years.

37

All Stars

Aart Smit, Jean van de Velde (regisseur) en Gijs Beenker

Our 15 minutes of fame on the silver screen On 5 June 2011, a day-long shoot took place for what will likely be our 15 minutes of fame on the silver screen.

Maastricht’s university football team, the DBSV Red Socks, was invited to act in the new movie Old Stars, All Stars 2. We left Maastricht for Durgerdam at 5 am for the first day of the shoot, which was heavily attended by the press. The day started with a breakfast and an initial meeting with the director Jean van de Velde and some of the actors. Then it was time for the real acting work. First we had to play 15 minutes of football against the Swift Boys, the star team which included Willem (Thomas Acda), Bram (Danny de Munck), Peter (Kasper van Kooten), Johnny (Daniël Boissevain), Nemo (Cas Jansen), Mark (Peter Paul Muller) and Paul (Raymi Sambo). We had to win – that much had been decided in advance – but in practice it was no easy task, especially since we had to stick to the centre of the field where the cameraman was.

We then re-enacted a few scenes for what would end up being the match highlights. And finally we filmed the

38

‘third half’, the cafeteria scene, which involved playing a game of table football and pretending to eat and drink our well-earned beer and bitterballen.

Throughout the shoot, the press had ample opportunity to get acquainted with these stars in the making. Finally, after a long day of acting but also a lot of waiting around, we headed back to Maastricht with a sense of satisfaction and the idea that the best was yet to come. And so it was: we joined the team for the premiere at the Tuschinsky in Amsterdam on 13 October. Like proper stars, we were picked up by a limousine and walked the red carpet into the theatre.

In fact, our part in the film lasts a grand total of 5 minutes.

Aart Smit, defensive midfielder and graduate of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Gijs Beenker, goalkeeper and student at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences.

Profile

Colophon

Education and research at Maastricht

• Maastricht Graduate School of Law

Publisher: © Maastricht University

University is organised primarily on the

• Montesquieu Institute Maastricht

Editor-in-Chief: Jeanine Gregersen

basis of faculties, schools and institutes.

Faculty of Psychology and

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Neuroscience

• Politics and Culture in Europe

• Graduate School of Cognitive and

• Science, Technology and Society • Science and Culture Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences • School for Nutrition, Toxicology and Metabolism (NUTRIM) • School for Cardiovascular Diseases (CARIM) • School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) • School for Mental Health and Neuroscience (MHeNS) • School for Oncology and Developmental Biology (GROW) • School of Health Professions Education (SHE) Faculty of Humanities and Sciences • Department of Knowledge Engineering • International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development (ICIS) • Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (MGSoG) • University College Maastricht • Teachers Academy • Architecture • Maastricht Science College Faculty of Law • Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (IGIR) • Institute for Transnational Legal Research (METRO) • Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies (ICGI) • Maastricht Centre for Human Rights • Maastricht European Private Law Institute (MEPLI) • The Maastricht Forensic Institute (tMFI)

Clinical Neuroscience • Clinical Psychological Science • Cognitive Neuroscience (CN) • Experimental Psychopathology (EPP) • Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology • Work & Social Psychology • Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC)

General Editor: Annelotte Huiskes Editorial Board: Gerard Mols (President), Marja van Dieijen-Visser, Aalt-Willem Heringa, Harm Hospers, Bernadette Jansma, Jos Kievits, Victor Mostart, Annemie Schols, Sophie Vanhoonacker, Ann Vanstraelen Texts: Jules Coenegracht, Jos Cortenraad, Annelotte Huiskes, Femke Kools, Margot Krijnen, Loek Kusiak, Jolien Linssen, Graziella Runchina Photography: Gijs Beenker en Aart Smit (p 38), Paul de Bont, Vriendenloterij (p 38), Harry Heuts (p 6 and 17), Gé Hirdes (p 37),

School of Business and Economics

Istockphoto (p 15), Niko Kriegeskorte and

• Maastricht Research School of

Marieke Mur (p 34 and 35), Herman van

Economics of Technology and

Ommen (cover, p 29), Herman Pijpers (p 17),

Organisations (METEOR)

Joey Roberts (p 28), Sacha Ruland (p 2,3,4,8,

• Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Foundation • United Nations University -

10,13,14,16,19,20,22,24,26,27,30 and 36), Peter Stigter (p 2,32 and 33), Jonathan Vos (p 21 and 28)

Maastricht

Translations and English editing:

Economic Research Institute on

Alison Edwards

Innovation and Technology

Graphic concept:

(UNU-MERIT), Foundation

Vormgeversassociatie BV, Hoog-Keppel

• Limburg Institute of Financial Economics (LIFE) • The Maastricht Academic Centre for Research in Services (MAXX) • Accounting, Auditing & Information Management Research Centre (MARC) • European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) • Social Innovation for Competitiveness,

Graphic design: Grafisch Ontwerpbureau Emilio Perez Print: Pietermans Drukkerij, Lanaken (B) Maastricht University magazine is published in February, June and October.

It is sent on demand to UM alumni and to external relations.

Editorial Office:

Organisational Performance and

Marketing & Communications

human Excellence

Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht T +31 43 388 5238 / +31 43 388 5222 E annelotte.huiskes@maastrichtuniversity.nl Cover: 35th Dies Natalis procession (2011) on Vrijthof square in Maastricht.

ISSN: 2210-5212

Based in Europe, focused on the world. Maastricht University is a stimulating environment. Where research and teaching are complementary. Where innovation is our focus. Where talent can ourish. A truly student oriented research university.

www.maastrichtuniversity.nl