Two young UG science talents will go abroad with NWO Rubicon grants

Two UG researchers who have recently gained their PhD’s will do research at foreign research institutes with a Rubicon grant from NWO. The Rubicon programme gives young, highly promising scientists the opportunity to gain international research experience.

Microfluidic generation of soft biomaterials based on elastin-like polypeptides for cell engineering

Kai Liu (Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials) goes to Harvard University, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, US, for two years. He will develop minuscule particles of a new type of material in which cells can easily grow into structured tissues. During the research he will, for example, examine the effect of the material's elasticity on the fate of the cells.

Elucidating the role of tRNA processing and modifications in proteostasis

Olga Sin (GUIDE, UMCG) goes to Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, for two years. She will investigate how defective protein production is linked to neurodegenerative diseases. Proteins play a key role in the structure, function and regulation of the cells in our body. If the production of proteins goes wrong then cells become stressed and we ultimately develop diseases.

Source: news release NWO