The alliance of TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht challenges new generations of researchers and students to cooperate right across disciplines without setting prior limitations.

The institutions also challenge themselves by allowing researchers to take unconventional approaches. The partners thus want to enable shared scientific breakthroughs, such as in molecular life sciences and artificial intelligence, and to find solutions to challenges related to the social themes of health, food, energy and the circular society. The ambition is considerable: to solve that which appears to have no solution.

The four institutions cooperate in a cross-disciplinary way in those fields in which they complement each other. This strengthens each of the individual institutions as well as the partnership itself.

Cooperation objectives

• To let young researchers and students come up with solutions to social challenges relating to energy, sustainability, health and food by making use of each other’s complementary expertise
• To put new key technologies on the map which make social innovation possible. The first will be molecular life sciences (‘living technologies’) and artificial intelligence.
• To make scientific breakthroughs and increase impact, including at the intersections of the humanities and social sciences, medical sciences, exact and technical sciences, and agricultural and food science.
• To prepare students for a future in which they continue to innovate acquired expertise and to combine this with creative skills, entrepreneurship and enterprising activities.
• To add economic value in and amongst the regions of Utrecht, Gelderse Vallei and Eindhoven.
• To continue to develop and improve support processes for education, research and innovation by learning from each other and exchanging and pooling expertise.