Two Rubicon grants for EUR academics

Fifteen recent graduates are going abroad to do research with a Rubicon grant. Once again, more women than men received the awards. Academics from Erasmus University obtained two of the fifteen grants.

Nine women and six men were awarded the NWO research grant, which will enable them to spend two years at an international research organisation. It is interesting that so many grants have been awarded to women, despite being in the minority among the applicants.

Only one in seven men (six out of the 43) passed the selection. Among the women, that was one in four (nine out of the 37). Last year, women were also awarded grants more often than men.

Polyps and vlogging

In Rotterdam, Reinier Meester and Stephanie Wassenburg were among the fortunate recipients. Meester will be performing research into the development of polyps in colon cancer at Stanford University School of Medicine in the United States. Wassenburg is going to the Carnegie Mellon University, also in the United States. There she will be studying the effectiveness of vlogging in education.

Every year, NWO supports sixty academics with a Rubicon grant. In total, the grants are worth seven million euros, distributed over three rounds. The programme received a lot of praise from laureates: for relatively little money, Dutch academics obtain a wealth of international experience.