TU Delft - BSc Nanobiology - Joint Degree between Erasmus University Rotterdam and TU Delft

What is it about a living cell that makes it alive? We now know that this has everything to do with the molecular machines that are interacting in living cells, giving rise to this mysterious property of being alive. And to fully understand how this process works, we need to combine tools from physics, mathematics and biology. And this is what we teach our students at Nanobiology. Nanobiology is a new field of study and there are really interesting possibilities. Our program is challenging, but the challenge is worth it because you get to enter a field with really exciting possibilities for the future. The first year of the program builds on knowledge students have from high school, the fundamental and the three core topics of math, physics and biology. The second year expands on that and more complex issues in all of those topics. In the third year of the program, the students apply a lot of the knowledge they've learned. Our program in Nanobiology involves a lot of different ways of teaching. Of course we have lectures and exams like classical university work, but we have, from the beginning, implemented innovative teaching methods such as active learning, group projects and a lot of practical work. So Nanobiology is not only an innovative field of study, but an innovative educational program. The Nanobiology program is given at two different locations, in Erasmus University Rotterdam and at the TU Delft. I really enjoy this because you get the best of both worlds. You get to enjoy the state-of-the-art biomedical facility in Rotterdam and the knowledge of physics in Delft. Apart from lectures, we also have practical assignments and projects. I really enjoy the practical assignments especially because you can see in real life what you're taught in lectures and they just really give you a deeper understanding of what Nanobiology is really about. I'm now finishing my Bachelor's and after my Bachelor's I will start with the Nanobiology Master's. After my Master's I would really like to do a PhD in a research institute or to get experience in a biotech company. The fact that students get familiar with the scientific language of both biologists and physicists also gives them many opportunities at biotech companies and this can vary from small start-up companies to large multinationals. My name is Marleen Dochteron. I'm a professor here in the Department of Bionanoscience. The daily activities of a researcher in my group are to first design and then perform experiments with the aim to understand how the cytoskeleton generates forces that allow cells, for example, to separate chromosomes during cell division. For this research we need people with a background both in biology and physics. So we need people who have biological knowledge of cellular processes and what is the function of these processes for living cells. And at the same time people who have knowledge about mathematics and physics who can apply mathematical modelling techniques to the problems that we're studying and also understand the physical principles of the measurement techniques that we use. And this is exactly what we teach students in our Nanobiology program.