Maastricht University Magazine October 2014

magazine 03/October 2014

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 flourish. A truly student oriented research university.

www.maastrichtuniversity.nl

About education and research at Maastricht University

“Designing a device is like painting

a picture�

Interview with university professor Ron Heeren - p6

Jennifer Barnes on

in

women

academia

Keynote speaker at the Opening of the Academic Year - p18

WTO judge

Peter van den Bossche on his bond with UM - p14

Contents

Further 04 Leading in Learning - New Master in Sustainable Finance 06 University professor - Ron Heeren: “Designing a device is like painting a picture”

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Regional research

Raising healthy children who feel good in their own skin and can put their talents to good use: this is the aim of the Healthy Primary School of the Future. This is a new educational concept in the Parkstad region with a curriculum revolving around a healthy diet, sport and exercise, cultural activities and the psychological wellbeing of pupils.

14 Portrait - Peter van den Bossche: He fled the golden cage 18 Opening of the Academic Year - Keynote speaker Jennifer Barnes on women in academia 20 Publication - Wiel Kusters’s biography of the literary critic Kees Fens 22 Professor–Student - Professor Alexander Sack, assistant professor Jill Lobbestael and PhD candidates Suzanne Brugman and Franziska Dambacher 26 Sustainability - Pim Martens: Animal research puts sustainability on the map 28 International - Eleonora Nillesen: Corruption in Liberia: What does it mean for development?

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Alum Coen Weddepohl

In 1994, Coen Weddepohl from Apeldoorn made a point of choosing the fledgling programme in International Management at Maastricht University. “I was attracted to Problem-Based Learning and the international character of the university. I knew I wanted to go abroad since I was 15.”

Twenty years later, Weddepohl is a partner in a hedge fund in the heart of New York.

30 Off the job - Albert Scherpbier: He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK 34 Alumni - Mirjam Lommel: Advocate of tea - Maastricht Star Lectures 36 University Fund - Professors’ Fund awards first grant - News News 10, 11, 17, 25 and 38

Profile

Colophon

Education and research at Maastricht

• Maastricht Centre for Human Rights

Publisher: © Maastricht University

University is organised primarily on the

• Maastricht Centre for Taxation (MCT)

Chief Editor: Annelotte Huiskes

basis of faculties, schools and institutes.

• Maastricht European Private Law

Editorial Board: Luc Soete (President),

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences • Politics and Culture in Europe • Science, Technology and Society • Arts, Media and Culture • Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development 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 • Maastricht Science Programme

Institute (MEPLI)

Arvid Hoffmann, Jos Kievits, Alexander Sack,

• Maastricht Graduate School of Law

Hildegard Schneider, Vivianne Tjan-Heijnen,

• Montesquieu Institute Maastricht

Sophie Vanhoonacker.

Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience • Graduate School of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience • Clinical Psychological Science • Cognitive Neuroscience (CN) • Experimental Psychopathology (EPP) • Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology • Work & Social Psychology • Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC) School of Business and Economics Economics (GSBE) • Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) • Limburg Institute of Financial Economics (LIFE) • The Maastricht Academic Centre for Research in Services (MAXX) • Accounting, Auditing & Information • European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) • United Nations University - Maastricht vation and Technology (UNU-MERIT),

• Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies (ICGI) • Maastricht Centre for European Law (MCEL)

Graziella Runchina, Hans van Vinkeveen.

Photography: Gonne Beekman (p28), Harry Heuts (cover, p6,9,11,18,19), Istockphoto (p17,25,38), Sacha Ruland (p2,3,4,10,12,14,16,20,22,24,26,30).

Translations and English editing: Alison Edwards Graphic concept: Vormgeversassociatie BV, Hoog-Keppel Graphic design: Grafisch Ontwerpbureau Emilio Perez, Geleen 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: Marketing & Communications Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht T +31 43 388 5238 / +31 43 388 5222 E annelotte.huiskes@maastrichtuniversity.nl webmagazine.maastrichtuniversity.nl

Management Research Centre (MARC)

• Institute for Globalisation and

Research (METRO)

Annelotte Huiskes, Jolien Linssen, Hanna McLean,

• Network Social Innovation (NSI)

Economic Research Institute on Inno-

• Institute for Transnational Legal

Texts: Jos Cortenraad, Femke Kools,

• Graduate School of Business and

Faculty of Law International Regulation (IGIR)

Diana Dolmans, Fons Elbersen, Roy Erkens,

• The Maastricht Forensic Institute (tMFI)

Cover: Ron Heeren in front of the The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp painted by Rembrandt.

With special thanks to Jean-Pierre Pilet.

With special thanks to Jean-Pierre Pilet.

Foundation • Social Innovation for Competitiveness,

ISSN: 2210-5212

Organisational Performance and human Excellence (NSCOPE) • Marketing-Finance Research Lab

webmagazine.maastrichtuniversity.nl

Crossing Borders At the start of this academic year, on the occasion of the 200 th anniversary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, I was asked to participate in a debate here in Maastricht on “borders”: the frontiers that surround us here in the southernmost part of the country to the east, west and south. My talk started with a Loesje slogan.

A Dutch free speech organisation, Loesje has gone international, so I take it you are familiar with its clever philosophical reflections.

The one I started my talk with was the following: “A border is actually a desire … to go further” (“een grens is eigenlijk een wens … om verder te gaan”).

This seemed to fit well with the history of Maastricht, from its settlement by Romans crossing the river Meuse to the location of the signing of the Treaty on European Union. That Treaty eliminated many economic and financial borders between European member states, but at the same time highlighted the many other borders left. These remaining borders form a barrier to transnational synergies and opportunities. And for a region such as South Limburg, with its 220 kilometres of international borders and only 6 kilometres of domestic borders, these missed synergies and opportunities are likely to be significant.

Far more so than for any other region in the Netherlands or, for that matter, in Europe.

With our partners, we are in the process of developing a business plan for an expertise centre to deal with these issues. But we also want to go further in enhancing knowledge of the languages of the Euregion among our students and staff. English is, and will remain, our lingua franca in both teaching and research. We also offer basic Dutch courses to our foreign students, to help them integrate better in the local community and encourage them to stay in South Limburg and the Netherlands after their studies. But we should reflect on whether we could offer German and French courses to our domestic, Dutch-speaking students, so that they too can exploit the borderless job opportunities of the Euregion. I support the idea that our students should be fluent not just in their mother tongue and English, but also in at least one other language of the Euregion.

For me, this is ultimately what our nearby borders invite us to take on board: knowledge of the culture and language on the other side.

Luc Soete Rector Magnificus, Maastricht University

Maastricht University lies at the centre of this Euregion, surrounded by borders, challenging us, too, “to go further”. Further in providing expertise, information and advice on the many practical barriers, from public transport and language barriers to unfavourable taxation, pension and social regimes, which limit and undermine cross-border mobility and cooperation.

Luc Soete

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Leading in Learning

Jaap Bos

Sustainability penetrates the financial world

By Jos Cortenraad

Sustainability is slowly but surely gaining a foothold in the financial world. Investors are growing more critical; banks and pension funds are increasingly investing in green energy and companies that take social responsibility seriously. The Maastricht University School of Business and Economics is responding to these developments with its new Master in Sustainable Finance. We sit down with Jaap Bos, one of the programme initiators (together with Jeroen Derwall).

Bos immediately makes one point clear: the new programme in Sustainable Finance is about finance.

“I wouldn’t recommend it to students with no economics or financial background. We want to train people who will work at financial institutions, pension funds or large

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consultancies. People who are well versed in the areas of investment and risk management, who will work as financial analysts or money managers. In short, financial experts – but ones who view their field through the lens of sustainability.”

Sustainability infusion Businesses and financial institutions are just beginning to engage with sustainability, as well they should. “Pension funds and investors are struggling. On the one hand, obviously they want good interest rates. On the other hand, the pressure to make sustainable investments is increasing”, Bos explains. “The concerns of stakeholders are carrying more weight, and they are questioning investments in weapons manufacturers and certain food producers.

A good example is PGGM. It manages the pensions of Greenpeace employees, who expect their pension contributions to be invested in environmentally friendly companies. Then there’s APG in Heerlen, the second largest pension fund manager in the world. Its portfolio is regularly dissected by the media, and it gets involved with debates on responsible investing. These organisations urgently need specialists who can help make their portfolios more sustainable.”

Standing out The idea for the new programme arose during the annual ‘brainstorm’ last summer. “We have a reputation to uphold as a Department of Finance. The department is world renowned, particularly for its high-impact research on responsible investing. We’ve landed international awards with ECCE, our research institute, and we collaborate with major institutions like APG, ABN AMRO and ING. This enables us to attract students from around the world. But of course, it’s important to keep innovating. You can study Finance at hundreds of universities. If you want to lead the pack, you have to continue to stand out. One way of doing that is with special master’s programmes.”

The economists observed that UM’s existing finance programmes paid little attention to sustainability. “One solution would be to insert this theme into the different curricula. Instead, we decided to design a whole master’s programme revolving around sustainability. The new programme links numbers with sustainability. It’s not just a minor; the entire programme is infused with sustainability.”

Banks Since the financial crisis, banks have been under the magnifying glass. “A banking crisis threatens our whole financial system and creates unrest. So banks have become much more cautious. They’re demanding more collateral, want nothing to do with risky mortgages and now consider loan applications very critically.” The master’s programme will train professionals capable of dealing with this development.

“Banks need specialists who can find the balance between good returns and a safe investment; they’re after long-term

certainty. That, too, is a form of sustainable banking.

What’s more, they’re under pressure to invest in sustainable energies and the environment. And they want to help entrepreneurs in poor countries with micro-loans. But how do you assess the reliability of the borrower? How do you make sure the money isn’t going to a loan shark? In our programme, students learn to benchmark and seek sustainable alternatives. It’s not easy; the Triodos bank, for example, is having trouble finding certified funds and projects. They’re looking for new alternatives to invest in.”

Mind set Bos and Derwall are also trying to bring about a new mind set.

“Investors still mainly look at the short term. They want to be able to sell their shares or bonds at any time. But investing by definition means looking at the long term. Consider an investment in energy-efficient, green buildings. The returns will only follow later, once you’ve covered the cost of the initial investment. You’ll then probably get a higher return than you would with an investment in traditional real estate. So over time, it’s worth more, and you’ve made both your stakeholders and your shareholders happy. We have to get used to the idea that sustainable investing can be not just socially but also financially attractive. This of course needs to be substantiated with rock-solid figures and research; that’s the basis of this master’s programme.”

Interest is high in the very practical Sustainable Finance programme. “So far we’ve done next to no recruitment, and yet the applications are rolling in. We’re also approached regularly by businesses and pension funds who want to know when we’ll be starting an executive version. They’re keen to sign up their own employees. That shows the level of demand that’s out there. We’ll certainly think about it, but we’re focusing on the regular programme for now.”

Ethical So will the new programme contribute to a more ethical financial world? Bos thinks carefully. “Maybe. Sustainability is no longer a niche or an afterthought; it’s penetrating right down to the bones of the business world. Having more skilled finance specialists will certainly accelerate the push towards sustainable alternatives.”

Jaap Bos Jaap Bos (1973) completed his undergraduate and graduates studies at Maastricht University. He has been associate professor of Finance at the School of Business and Economics since 2010.

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University professor

Ron Heeren

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“Designing a device is like painting a picture”

By Annelotte Huiskes

Deducing from a single hair what drug a person has taken and when, to within an hour’s accuracy. This is just one of the possibilities offered by mass spectrometry (put simply, the photography of molecules). Ron Heeren is a specialist in this technology. As of 1 September, Heeren is a ‘university professor’ in Maastricht, a special post granted on the basis of his scientific achievements. His research group in Maastricht will focus on medical applications of the mass spectrometer.

“It’s a fantastic tool for personalised medicine”, he says. Together with fellow university professor, the nanobiologist Peter Peters, he is joint head of the new Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute (M4I). With the launch of the M4I, Maastricht is now the largest imaging centre in Europe.

Heeren has been fascinated by technology for as long as he can remember.

As a boy, he took radios apart and used the parts to build a new one. In fact, this is what he still does - only with mass spectrometers instead of radios. “You have to understand devices. Designing a device is like

painting a picture. It’s a whole creative process: to capture the final image, you have to know your tools inside out. You have to know what every brush, cloth or paint does.

It’s no different with a device. What does the vacuum do, how do these particles move through that device,

what happens when those particles are detected, how do they fall apart?

And how can I influence that process?

For me, it’s great fun to teach my students and PhD candidates to understand a device and solve complex problems together.”

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University professor

The best of three worlds The technology of the mass spectrometer is the common thread running through Heeren’s career.

After his PhD on nuclear fusion at the high-tech FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in Amsterdam, he decided to transfer within the institute to biomolecular research. He was keen to see results in his lifetime, he explains, and that was unlikely with nuclear fusion.

“To try to understand biomolecules is to try to understand the complexity of life. It’s a puzzle that makes putting a radio together pale in comparison.

But the minute you find a piece of the puzzle, you can make a real difference. It’s the best not of two but of three worlds: technology, science and social relevance.”

Anatomy lesson In 1992, Heeren was among the first in the world to build a mass spectrometer that enables users to examine large, intact proteins.

Three years later, he pioneered the use of this technology in the study of molecular processes in painting.

“The idea behind the MOLART project, led by Jaap Boon, was to investigate the ageing processes of paintings using mass spectrometry.

My students and I developed techniques to prepare samples from paintings for analysis with the imaging mass spectrometer.

We were involved in the research for the restoration of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.”

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“A microscope only sees colours; the mass spectrometer sees the particles that the colour is made of. Say you’re studying a painting with a blue plant.

Why are the leaves blue? With a microscope, you might see transparent particles and blue particles. The transparent ones may once have been yellow, but you can’t see that.

With a mass spectrometer, however, I can see which molecules those transparent particles are made up of; for example, that the original yellow particles have become discoloured, turning the green leaves blue.

Shedding light on the molecular composition of these particles helps us to understand the ageing process of a painting.”

Living tissue The next challenge was to apply these molecular imaging techniques to living tissue. In 1997 Heeren set up his own research group at the AMOLF, developing new techniques for the rapid imaging of relatively large surfaces (200 x 200 microns).

“On the surface of a cell you can see the molecules that determine how the cell organises itself. In stem cells, molecular signals determine whether a stem cell will develop into, say, cartilage or a lung. The same molecules also regulate processes of health and disease. Understanding these molecular signals enables us to manipulate them, which can be of interest for the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, in collaboration with the Netherlands Cancer Institute, we’ve examined a whole series of

tumours. The technology lets us see exactly which cells on a tissue section are healthy, which ones are next to be infected, and which ones are already diseased or dead. And that in turn says something about which treatments will and won’t work. This is becoming a key driver in medical practice: personalised medicine.”

Diagnostics According to Heeren, imaging is an excellent diagnostic and prognostic tool that pathologists could use to analyse biopsies. “Unfortunately, very few pathologists are familiar with these possibilities. This is another reason to make the transition to clinical practice in Maastricht after 25 years of fundamental

research at a top institute like AMOLF. Fundamental research is important, but you have to be able to validate new methods. You can only do that if you have access to a bio bank with donated tissue material, and researchers who are enthusiastic about innovative techniques and want to contribute to translational research. Maastricht has a huge bio bank with all sorts of tissues that we can use for our validation studies.

I dare to predict that in ten years’ time, this imaging technique will be a standard diagnostic tool and patients will be assessed on their individual molecular status. We’re already well on the way in oncology, neurology and cardiovascular medicine - three fields that feature prominently in Maastricht.”

Ron Heeren in front of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp painted by Rembrandt. With thanks to the Mauritshuis.

iKnife But the clinical applicability of mass spectrometry is not limited to diagnostics. Heeren is already in discussions with surgeons at the MUMC+ on the iKnife, an application of molecular imaging developed by a colleague. During an operation, the knife analyses the molecular information from the smoke that is released when you cut tissue. It then gives a red light if it detects tumour tissue and a green light if it doesn’t.

“This helps the surgeon remove the tumour with extreme precision, which improves the patient’s prognosis and healing process. We aim to further develop this intra-operative mass spectrometry here in Maastricht.”

Another draw card for Heeren was the potential for investment in equipment and people through the Kennis-As programme in Limburg.

The new M4I institute, which consists in Heeren’s mass spectrometry lab

and Peter Peters’s nanoscopy lab, is already the largest imaging centre in Europe. “Our high-resolution techniques make the processes in cells visible, but understanding them is an entirely different story. We’re only just starting to gain insight into this remarkable process. But what I enjoy about it is precisely this complexity.

Or as my hero Richard Feynman [the physicist and Nobel Prize winner] put it: ‘the inconceivable nature of nature’.”

Ron Heeren Ron Heeren (1964) obtained his PhD on plasma-surface interactions at the University of Amsterdam in 1992. After working as a postdoctoral researcher on mass spectrometry for two years, in early 1995 he joined the MOLART research team at the FOM Institute AMOLF. Four years later, he started a research group focusing on the development of mass spectrometry imaging. He was appointed professor at the Faculty of Chemistry in Utrecht in 2001. As of 1 September, Heeren is university professor at Maastricht University.

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Opening of the Academic Year On Monday 1 September Maastricht University celebrated the opening of the academic year 2014/15. This year’s theme was ‘Women in academia: change ahead?’ The higher up the career ladder you look, the fewer women you see in universities in the Netherlands. Twenty percent of Maastricht University professors are women - not bad compared to other Dutch universities, but this can

and must be improved. The morning programme focused on how to promote the flow of women through the ranks in academia. The idea was to inspire an active policy that encourages more female academics to climb the career ladder.

Student Award and Edmond Hustinx Prize for Science In keeping with tradition, the winners of the Student Award and Edmond Hustinx Prize for Science were announced.

The Student Award was presented to Rob van Gassel, Laura Fransen, Veronique Schiffer and Yuri Foreman, the initiators of the “Health University”. This year’s Edmond Hustinx Prize for Science was awarded to Dr Judith Cosemans.

The official opening ceremony took place at the Theater aan het Vrijthof. The keynote speaker was Dr Jennifer Barnes, ProVice-Chancellor for International Strategy at the University of Cambridge. Barnes has had an impressive career, from opera singer to president of an all-female college in Cambridge to her present executive role. She has extensive experience in higher education and has advised peers in more than 25 countries on partnerships between the business sector, government and universities. (See also the interview with her on page 18 in this issue of the Maastricht University Magazine)

Edmond Hustinx Prize

Student Award

UM’s first students honoured A special part of this year’s opening ceremony was the tribute to our very first students. Although the university was not officially established until 1976, these 50 pioneers started their medical studies in 1974, thus helping to lay the foundations of Maastricht University.

Many of these graduates were present during the ceremony and received a special commemorative coin.

UM’s first students

NWO awards Vidi grants to five top researchers Five scientists from Maastricht University have each received up to €800,000 to develop an innovative line of research and compose their own research group.

The recipients are Ingrid Dijkgraaf (Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences: Biochemistry), Joris Hoeks (Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences: Human Biology), Nils Kok

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(School of Business and Economics: Finance), Federico De Martino (Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience: Cognitive Neuroscience) and Blanche Schroen (Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences: Cardiology).

Their projects range from tackling climate change through real estate to the role of inflammatory proteins in atherosclerosis and the processing of

sound in the human brain.

The Vidi is aimed at researchers who have conducted excellent research for up to eight years after gaining a PhD and who are among the leading ten to twenty percent of scholars in their discipline. The Vidi grant provides them with funding for five years of research.

Saskia Klosse new member of SER The Council of Ministers of the Netherlands has nominated Saskia Klosse, Maastricht professor of Social Law, as a member of the Social Economic Council (SER). The SER is a government advisory body composed of 15 Crown-appointed members. The other new appointees are the professors Nicolette van Gestel (Tilburg) and Fieke van der Lecq (Rotter-

dam) and het politician Ed Nijpels. The SER plays an important role in mediating between representatives of employers and employees on economic decisions.

Klosse’s research focuses on labour and social security law from a national and international perspective, in particular issues related to unemployment, illness

and working conditions. She was a member of the Bakker Commission, which published the report ‘A future that works’ in 2008. She also plays an active role in European research networks and multidisciplinary collaborations.

Prof. Rainer Goebel appointed member of KNAW The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has appointed 17 new members. Among them is Rainer Goebel, professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University.

Members of KNAW are leading scientists from all disciplines, nominated by peers from within and outside the Academy.

Goebel (1964) conducts ground-breaking research in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging.

He developed the fMRI data analysis software Brainvoyager, which allows

for real-time visualisation of brain activity and parts of the brain. This will allow patients with depression or Parkinson’s disease, for example, to be treated through neurofeedback based on fMRI data from their own brains.

UM/MUMC+ is home to 14 other KNAW members: Maurits Allessie, Clemens van Blitterswijk, Han Brunner, Michael Faure, Coen Hemker, André Knottnerus, Harald Merckelbach, Jim van Os, Herman van Praag, Rob Reneman, Jan Smits, Luc Soete, Peter Wakker and Hein Wellens.

Six Veni grants for young academics Six young academics from Maastricht University have been awarded Veni grants: Ellen Dirkx, Nora Engel, Heidi Jacobs (Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences), Jesper Nederlof (School of Business and Economics), Tamar Sharon and Eliza Steinbock (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences).

Veni grants are individual grants from

the NWO worth up to €250,000. To foster promising academic talent, Veni grants are aimed at researchers who obtained their PhDs in the last three years.

The scheme stimulates curiosity-driven and innovative research by allowing recipients the freedom to choose their own research topic.

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Regional research

Healthy pupils who get the most out of themselves

By Graziella Runchina

Raising healthy children who feel good in their own skin and can put their talents to good use: this is the aim of the Healthy Primary School of the Future. This is a new educational concept in the Parkstad region, supported by the Province of Limburg.

The curriculum revolves around a healthy diet, sport and exercise, cultural activities and the psychological wellbeing of pupils. According to Maastricht University (UM), the educational foundation Movare and the Regional Public Health Service (GGD) for South Limburg, the initiative is an excellent investment for the future.

“Going to school should be a party”, says UM professor Onno van Schayck.

“That’s my ideal picture.”

But as Van Schayck realises all too well, there’s still a long way to go. “I see a lot of room for improvement in terms of health and healthy behaviour in the Parkstad region.

Diseases caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, are on average more common here than in the rest of the country”, says the professor of Preventive Medicine. “And poor health ultimately leads to poorer learning outcomes, fewer job opportunities and thus higher unemployment. This is a negative, vicious circle that results in structural and persistent deprivation.”

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Structured curriculum

The Healthy Primary School of the Future, an initiative of Movare, aims to turn this tide. The programme will be launched in the school year 2015/16 at three primary schools in Landgraaf and one in Brunssum. “We want to investigate whether children who receive a structured curriculum with education, sport, exercise and healthy diet show better physical, emotional and intellectual growth”, explains Andrew Simons, project leader of the Healthy Primary School and regional director of Movare, the umbrella

Andrew Simons and Onno van Schayck at the primary school De Speurneus in Brunssum

organisation for 52 primary schools in South Limburg.

“By offering a total concept that brings all these elements together, we’re going much further than national health and exercise initiatives. The unique thing about this initiative is that it integrates education, health, childcare and various forms of leisure in a comprehensive curriculum both within and outside the school walls.”

Two extra hours The new curriculum will be offered to 1200 primary school pupils and 500 pre-schoolers five days a week, from 7.30 am to 7 pm. Attendance from 8.30 am to 4 pm will be mandatory. “This means children will receive two extra hours of school per day, including a healthy lunch and at least an extra hour of exercise. This daily schedule takes the children’s biorhythm into account”, Van Schayck explains. Having a fixed daily schedule also creates peace of mind, reducing stress for both parents and children.

“As a result, the children should show better physical, emotional and intellectual growth.”

Not to mention the economic upside: the programme will make it easier for parents to combine work and childcare.

“This can lead to higher labour market participation and sustainable employability”, says Simons. A win-win situation, in other words.

Role of parents “For the project to succeed, the role and involvement of parents is crucial”, Van Schayck emphasises. “Parents pay lip service to the idea of a healthy lifestyle, but they don’t really put it into practice. Far too often we see children who don’t exercise enough, skip breakfast and eat an unhealthy lunch, like a bag of crisps. Yet studies show that the most effective time to learn healthy behaviour is when you’re young.”

Multidisciplinary The multidisciplinary programme will run until 2020, involving around 25 researchers from the UM faculties of

Economics, Medicine, Psychology and Law. In addition to the four participating primary schools, six other schools will serve as controls. Van Schayck: “We’ll take the same measurement of the pupils’ behaviour, learning outcomes, health and quality of life at every school. We’ll also test for effects on the quality of life of parents and teachers, and examine how support for the project evolves among them as well as other parties in society.”

The initiative is in line with the principles of the strategic programme Kennis-As Limburg, which is concerned with the development of a vital population and a healthy growth engine in the region. UM will make a detailed analysis of the costs versus the social returns. The long-term economic and social consequences for the region will also be mapped.

“The idea is that once the programme proves its worth, more and more schools will start to follow the Healthy Primary School principle”, Simons explains. “We’re convinced that this project will lead education professionals and citizens to think differently about education. The present education system is too standardised, and not tailored to the capabilities and limitations of individual pupils. With this concept, we are hoping for and expecting a big improvement. Not only in the development of children’s talents, but also in terms of reducing the socioeconomic health gap in this region.”

Onno van Schayck Onno van Schayck (1958) has been research coordinator at the UM Department of General Practice Medicine since 1996. He has been professor of Preventive Medicine in Primary Care at the medical faculties in both Maastricht and Nijmegen since 1998. He is the scientific director of the national research school CaRe and a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands. He has also been an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh since 2008.

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Portrait

Peter van den Bossche

He fled the golden cage

By Femke Kools

Peter van den Bossche speaks thoughtfully, as befits a judge. Certain things he doesn’t say, but instead portrays with his hands. To illustrate the collaboration with his six colleagues in the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), he rubs the knuckles of his fists against each other. With a more than impressive CV, he holds the highest judicial position in the field of international trade law. He may be in Geneva more often than he is in Maastricht, but he feels a deep bond with the university. “I owe UM so much.”

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Van den Bossche recalls lying awake with jet lag in a Jakarta hotel when he heard an email come in on his phone. “I’ll just have a quick look”, he thought. “Congratulations!”

It was 2009, and he had just been selected by the almost 160 countries represented in the WTO as one of the seven judges in the Appellate Body.

“I wasn’t exactly cheering in my bed”, he says hesitantly. “I was happy and proud, but I knew - or thought I knew - what I was getting myself into.

I’d been principal legal adviser to the seven judges of the Appellate Body from 1997 until 2001. But there’s quite a difference between legal adviser and judge. I had no idea how it feels when you and your fellow judges are ultimately responsible for settling international disputes that often concern sensitive social issues and a lot of money.”

It is at this point in the conversation

that he makes the grating gesture with his fists. “It’s a small club of judges from all over the world, with very different ideas about international trade law and other matters. That gives rise to intense debates. As a judge, you’re not there to defend the economic or other interests of your own country or group, but naturally I bring my European perspective with me. And in Europe the balance between free trade and social values is different than in China, for example, or the US. Ultimately you and your fellow judges have to agree on a verdict in every dispute. It sometimes bothers me when I hear my academic colleagues call a certain verdict of the Appellate

Body unclear or even confused. Often the section of the verdict at issue will have been discussed for days. If one of my students came up with it, I’d also write in the margin: ‘Reformulate!

Unclear.’ But a judge sometimes has to settle for a vague compromise text.”

Verdict One high-profile case the Appellate Body recently ruled on had to do with flavoured cigarettes. The US banned their sale in 2009 because when young people take up smoking, it is often with flavoured cigarettes. But menthol cigarettes - which are produced in the US - were exempt from the prohibition.

Indonesia, being a major producer of other types of flavoured cigarettes, was less than impressed, and ultimately took its case to the Appellate Body.

“We decided that a ban like that can only be upheld if it is non-discriminatory.

So in this case, the US was ordered to bring its legislation into line with the WTO rules”, explains Van den Bossche.

“In 85% of cases, countries comply with the verdict within the prescribed period, a high success rate compared to other international courts.”

Harry Potter It doesn’t get much more prestigious or interesting than this in the field of

international trade law. “Professionally, this job is my absolute peak.”

But Van den Bossche is perhaps just as proud of his textbook, The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization, which recently appeared in its third edition with Cambridge University Press (CUP, 1045 pp.). “More than 2700 copies were sold in the first six

months. Of course Harry Potter sold that much in an hour, but still, it’s the CUP’s second best-selling legal textbook. It’s used in education and legal practice around the world, and I’m proud that the third edition will also appear in Chinese and Spanish.” He donates all royalties to a faculty fund that supports PhD candidates from developing countries in international economic law.

Paris It’s unclear whether his career would have been this impressive had he, after graduating from the University of Antwerp, taken the job on offer as a junior lecturer. “I was keen to go abroad, so I turned it down.”

He attributes this to his 18th birthday present from his parents: a monthlong, intensive French course in Paris.

“I became aware there of the wider world and all its diversity. For the first time I was in a city that never sleeps, with fellow students from all over the world. That internationalised me.”

His parents both worked in the education sector, and gave their five children - Peter being the eldest - every opportunity. “Combined with the sense of security, that meant I had a wonderful childhood.” He has been searching his whole life, he now says, to find the right in different positions argued by opposing parties. “Distancing yourself, listening to both parties and then making your decision. That’s something you do as a judge as well.”

But it wasn’t the prospect of being a judge that attracted him to study law.

“It seemed like good preparation for a socially engaged future.”

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Portrait

Golden cage Having graduated with top marks, Van den Bossche then pursued his PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, where he also became an academic staff member. In between he studied at the University of Michigan, where he met his wife, an Ecuadorian architect, with whom he has two children. In 1990, he became a law clerk to the Advocate-General Walter van Gerven at the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg. “When I left for the European Court my boss at the European University Institute said, ‘Be sure to keep the door of the golden cage open’. As a law clerk at

the Court you were - and are extremely well paid. When I said I’d like to become an assistant professor in European Law here in Maastricht in 1992, that was seen as very strange.

Surely I knew what an assistant professor was paid? The pay was indeed a quarter of my salary, but my wife and I have never let ourselves be led by money. I just really wanted to get into academia.” His message to students: you have to be willing to work hard and be open to opportunities. You have to take risks and set priorities - and money should not be one of them.

Peter van den Bossche Peter van den Bossche (1959) is professor of International Economic Law at UM and in his second and final term as judge at the WTO’s Appellate Body.

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Fascinating and hard UM has a special place in his heart.

“You had to do a lot of teaching, but I was happy with that. I embraced every opportunity. For example, I

designed a new course in International Trade Law. I remember Gerard Mols, the dean at the time, saying ‘Do our students really have to know that too? Well, give it a try for a year or two and then we’ll see.’ I’ve always made a point of maintaining my relationship with UM. And the faculty continues to give me every opportunity to do so.”

In late 1996, he was invited to apply for the job of principal legal adviser at the then newly established Appellate Body. From 1997 to 2001 he worked there thirteen hours per day, occasionally returning to Maastricht to teach on weekends. “I still remember one wintry Saturday morning, standing with 20 students in front of the closed door of the Zwingelput 4. A misunderstanding with security. So we did the class in the room above café Tribunal.”

This first period in Geneva, he says, was a fascinating but difficult time.

“You only went home to sleep, you didn’t see much of the children.

When I returned to Maastricht in September 2001 I was physically and mentally drained. Completely. Would I do it again? Yes! It’s crazy, but the work was just so fascinating!”

Maastricht University, yet again, best performing young university in Europe Maastricht University is, yet again, the best performing young university in Europe. In the fourth edition of the QS ‘Top 50 Under 50’ ranking, Maastricht University maintained its 6th position.

This special ranking for young universities was published for the first time in 2012 to give an indication which universities may in the future become top universities worldwide. The ‘Top 50 Under 50’ is a

special ranking derived from the QS World University Rankings, wherein UM climbed three places recently to place 118.

The QS World University Ranking evaluates universities on their percentage of international students, citations, academic reputation, reputation with employers, staff/student ratios and the percentage international staff.

Passive index tracking better than active trading for individual investors Individual investors benefit more from passively tracking the stock market by buying an index fund than actively trading on the market. This is the conclusion of an article by Arvid Hoffmann and Thomas Post, assistant professors of Finance at Maastricht University, in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.

The researchers concluded that active

trading often yields a poor rate of return due to high transaction costs and underdiversification. This is further reinforced by the self-attribution bias, according to which investors attribute bad returns to external factors and good returns to their own skills. As a result, bad returns do not lead investors to reassess or adjust their investment behaviour, while good returns stimulate overconfidence.

“Unless individual investors are prepared to view investing as an expensive hobby,” says Hoffmann, “they would be better off buying a passive index fund and leaving the active trading to others.”

Recognising malnutrition in healthcare can save millions of euros In times of cutbacks in the healthcare sector, PhD candidate Karen Freijer believes that much more attention should be paid to providing optimal nutrition for patients. She indicates that disease-related malnutrition in adults and the elderly costs the Dutch healthcare sector 1.9 billion euros per year. According to Freijer’s calculations, for example, even just for the over-65s receiving outpatient care (home care and nursing home), 13 million euros per

year could be saved by optimising their daily nutrition, including through the use of medical supplement drinks.

“Doctors and nurses are still not aware enough of the high prevalence of malnutrition, its negative consequences for the patient and high costs for society.”

Malnutrition is not always visible on the surface, but healthcare professionals can identify malnutrition or the risk thereof by using validated screening

tools,” says Freijer. And that happens too little in practice.

According to her, that is partly because malnutrition is not considered in the overall treatment of patients. Furthermore, the cooperation in between various professionals should be improved. She argues for the inclusion of basic knowledge of nutrition and nutrition-related issues in medical school curriculum.

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Opening of the Academic Year

Jennifer Barnes

Change ahead in academia

By Jolien Linssen

It is the year 1917. While most of the European continent is still in the midst of the Great War, something remarkable happens in the Dutch academic world. Plant pathologist Johanna Westerdijk is appointed as professor at Utrecht University, thereby becoming the first female professor in the Netherlands. It is a historic moment, paving the way for future generations of talented women. Yet here we are, almost a century later, with a meagre 15% of female professors. Where did we go wrong?

According to Dr Jennifer Barnes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy at the University of Cambridge, this is the wrong question to start with. “My view is that we are rapidly making adjustments”, she says. “Both women and men.” Barnes has been invited to address the issue of women

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in academia, and the lack thereof, as keynote speaker during official opening of the academic year at Maastricht University.

Having built up an impressive CV over the years - from opera singer to president of an all-female college in Cambridge to her present executive role - she seems to be a logical choice.

Nonetheless, she has avoided speaking publicly about the topic of gender (in)equality in the academic world for 30 years. This is a statement in itself. “I wanted to live gender politics in the academy, and I wanted to be extremely supportive of outstanding women wherever I could find them. But I did not want to have the talk, because the talk polarises”, she explains. “My message is: the time for polarisation is over. Because as long as we polarise, we’re actually slowing things down.”

Prejudice Surely Barnes acknowledges the facts. Not only in the Netherlands, but all across Europe, women remain underrepresented in top academic positions. In the United Kingdom, where she works, women make up a mere 22% of professors. Her point, however, is that we should not allow these figures to discourage us.

“Just reiterating the fact that women face a lot of prejudice, they’ll have to fight really hard and even then the statistics remain demoralising does not help them advance in their careers”, she says. “Instead it distracts from the real business of creating a network of people who recognise your abilities. Talent is only as good as the support you can gather around. Whether male or female, cultivate your relationships, push yourself hard, and take responsibility for your abilities and volition.”

higher education itself, we’re being asked to integrate so many different ways of thinking. How are our Chinese colleagues working with us, and what are the assumptions of our colleagues in the Middle East, or India? The challenge to overcome these fundamental differences will help dissipate the tension between the male and the female.”

When it comes to her own career - that surprising path from opera singer to Pro-Vice-Chancellor - Barnes has never sensed that her gender hindered her development.

“It’s about finding things you really care about doing, being prepared to take risks and not taking setback as a sign of a gender conspiracy.” She pauses. “On the other hand, if I were a women repeatedly facing prejudice in a higher education department, I might just leave. Because I know I’d be good enough to get a job elsewhere, and make a point in showing how successful I could be in a supportive environment. Luckily, I don’t know many young people who genuinely think that women are less able or less accomplished. I have huge confidence in the next generation.”

Jennifer Barnes and Martin Paul, President Maastricht University, at the opening of the Academic Year

Moreover, it would be erroneous to assume that the absence of women at the top of the academic world is solely a women’s problem. “On the contrary, only the integration of women and men will bring about the shift that we have the potential to make in the next 50 years. And this implies an understanding of the different attitudes and roles that men are now also experiencing.”

She would have been happy to get rid of the question mark in the theme of the opening of the academic year: Women in academia: change ahead? “There’s no doubt that one of the most significant changes will be the rising number of women in powerful, decision-making roles.”

This seemingly small change is one that perfectly captures her different approach to the topic.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor For change ahead in academia will require more than solving issues to do with women and men, Barnes continues. As Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy, her task is to establish multidisciplinary research partnerships in different parts in the world, thereby interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. “Because of the rise of global mobility and the internationalisation of

Jennifer Barnes Jennifer Barnes (1960) began her career as an opera singer.

She was an associate professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, and assistant principal and dean of the Trinity College of Music. In 2005 she became the first Director of International Education for BP, advising colleagues across the globe on partnerships with governments, academic institutions, NGOs and businesses. In 2010 she was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy at the University of Cambridge, where she develops policy and strategy for the university’s international engagements.

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Publication

Wiel Kusters

A columnist who longed for eternity

By Hans van Vinkeveen

Kees Fens was the greatest Dutch post-war literary critic and essayist, an influential columnist and winner of the P.C. Hooft Prize, a lifetime achievement award for literature. But as a new biography by emeritus professor of literature Wiel Kusters reveals, Fens was also an incurable Catholic and an outsider with a multifaceted character: contemplative, witty, but also vicious.

“Great God”, was the only thing an emotional Fens could say when he visited the now vacant Chassékerk in the last year of his life. The church in

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Amsterdam-West had been a symbol for the happy days of his childhood.

It was here that the young street urchin developed a love of faith and

liturgy and a deep sense of empathy.

Now, the dilapidated church seemed to symbolise a world in ruins - the remaining shards of Catholicism,

in which European culture had been couched for centuries.

For Fens, God was never far away. His work was steeped in Catholicism. This is the overwhelming impression left by the biography (Mijn versnipperd bestaan. Het leven van Kees Fens 19292008), and it is one Kusters was criticised for. “But I didn’t make Fens any more Catholic than he was. It was a constant in his life.” For many people, it may have been obscured by his openness. “Fens never subjugated a person’s worldview to his own. What appealed to him was the richness of the Christian tradition and Catholic culture: the Gregorian chant, the incense, the ancient texts and rituals, a persistent world that transcended mundane, everyday things. That’s what he always sought and wanted to experience.”

Close reading Kusters wrote the biography on the invitation of Fens’s widow. He assumes this was partly because he himself is intimately acquainted with Catholic culture. “She didn’t interfere with anything else, no”, he smiles. In his view, the biography was necessary: “Someone of Fens’s stature deserves as much.” Fens himself had once praised one of Kusters’s own essays.

“He had such stature, it was as though you’d been given a diploma.” There were no juicy secrets to stumble across, but Kusters was surprised by how great a role Catholicism played in Fens’s life. “No biographer could have got around it.”

This will be more of a surprise to older generations of literature students, who knew Fens mainly as one of the founders of the magazine Merlyn.

The magazine promoted a new way

of reading - ‘close reading’ - according to which any interpretation of a piece of writing must derive strictly from the text itself. Surely his Catholicism

would interfere with this notion of unbiased reading? Even before his Merlyn days, Kusters explains, Fens read texts purely textually. “In fact his way of reading stemmed from the exegetes; people who interpreted Bible texts at different levels.”

Kusters himself was inspired by this manner of “reading with a microscope”. “It turns reading into a creative activity. Curiously enough, this increases the more you limit yourself to the text alone. Because what’s really there, when you think about it?”

Outsider A picture gradually emerges of someone who, from a young age, felt like an outsider everywhere he went.

Fens came from a poor family, and idolised his classmates in grammar school: they spoke so beautifully; they already knew what poems were.

As a journalist, he shunned topical events in favour of “eternal things”.

As a professor with no academic training, he felt even more like a dilettante. But the erudite Fens was not afraid of being oppositional. He was averse to snobbery, and publicly supported the popular children’s books by Annie M.G. Schmidt.

And his caricatures of others were notoriously uncanny. As he said of Andries Knevel, a presenter for the Evangelical broadcaster EO, “His style of questioning is always an interrogation and the Inquisition is never far away.”

Fens detested modern developments such as rampant commercialisation.

In his view, this sent the quality of education and universities downhill, and meant that studying was no longer about critical reflection, as it ought to be. Instead it degenerated into vacuuming up information and consuming courses indiscriminately.

Knowledge had to be ‘useful’, Fens felt. According to Kusters, he has a

point - but also an unrealistic, overly romantic image of the university, probably because he himself had never had the chance to study.

“He grumbled from the sidelines, but didn’t exactly install himself on the barricades, administratively speaking. Ultimately, he wasn’t the man for that either.”

Fragmentation Was Kees Fens a happy man? His ideal world lay in tatters. Yet happy is perhaps the most frequent word in his work. The title of Kusters’s biography, a quote from Fens himself, suggests

he felt he had squandered his life.

He thought of himself as a columnist, nothing more. “He always dreamt of writing a great specialist work,” says Kusters, “but on the other hand, he had tremendous fun writing his pieces.

He also enjoyed the short-term hits he was able to score. It was in his nature - he never could sit still.”

A figure like Fens leaves behind a void that is never filled. But he does leave a legacy. He was succeeded by a number of good essayists, and had a lasting impact on reading instruction in secondary education. Moreover, he made a significant contribution to the canonisation of authors like Jan Wolkers (whom Fens discovered), Theo Thijssen and Simon Carmiggelt.

The latter expressed his thanks to him in his second anthology Kroeglopen: “For Kees Fens, who only likes Coke.”

Wiel Kusters Wiel Kusters (1947) is emeritus professor of General and Dutch Literature at Maastricht University. He has published poems, essays and studies of the Limburg miners.

He previously published a biography of the Maastricht poet Pierre Kemp.

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Professor-Student

From hot sauce to tickling the brain:

Measuring, predicting and lowering aggression

By Jolien Linssen

Imagine the following situation. You have agreed to cook dinner for your motherin-law, who has been acting rather strangely lately. “Wasn’t she ignoring me the last time we visited her?”, you grumble to yourself while preparing the chilli sauce.

Her behaviour has been bothering you for weeks now. The water boils. Chopping the peppers, you realise she’s been mean to the kids too. “She doesn’t answer their phone calls. And she didn’t even show up at Billy’s birthday party.” You chop and chop, and while your heart beats faster, more and more peppers slip into the bowl.

You’re angry - and she’s going to taste it. The proof is in the sauce.

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Jill Lobbestael and Suzanne Brugman

Measuring aggression is a complicated matter. This has led clinical psychologists to come up with ingenious ways to find indicators for it, one of them being the so-called hot sauce experiment. “After someone’s anger is triggered, we ask them to prepare a dipping sauce for someone else.

The spiciness of the sauce is then an indicator or sign of aggression”, says clinical psychologist Jill Lobbestael.

As assistant professor at the Maastricht Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, she applied for a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The goal: to study aggression from both a cognitive and a neuroscientific perspective not only to measure, but also to predict and even lower aggressive behaviour in violent offenders. For though we might all experience feelings of anger or aggression sometimes – be it towards our boss or our mother-in-law – only for a small minority will this result in excessive behaviour.

“What makes this research innovative is the fact that it combines clinical psychological science, which is Jill’s area of expertise, and cognitive neuroscience”, explains Alexander Sack, professor of Functional Brain Stimulation and Neurocognitive Psychology. “Every sort of behaviour is somehow linked to the brain eventually. In our department, we know how to measure and manipulate brain activity. The challenge is to figure out how the findings of clinical psychologists – their ideas about what aggression is and how it can be measured – can be translated into our world, which is that of the scanner.”

Experiments Quite a challenge indeed. Such close collaboration between the departments of clinical psychological science and cognitive neuroscience has not been witnessed before. It is up to PhD candidates Suzanne Brugman and Franziska Dambacher to bridge the gap.

Franziska Dambacher and Alexander Sack

Brugman, who works alongside Lobbestael at the clinical psychology department, has mainly done research in forensic clinics. Here, the research team monitors the occurrence of violent incidents and measures aggression experimentally. “For example, by having patients participate in a competitive reaction time game”, Brugman says.

“The game is designed for two people: the participant and the opponent, who is in fact non-existent. The participant’s task is to push a button as soon as it turns red. If the participant is faster than the opponent and hence wins the game, he or she may ‘punish’ the opponent by sending a noise, and vice versa.”

The bottom line of the experiment: the length and loudness of the noise is an indicator of aggression, just like the spiciness of the sauce. What’s more, it allows the researchers to test whether a participant will act aggressively without first being provoked, or only after being confronted with a mean opponent who inflicts harsh punishments.

“We’re very happy that we’re able to work with behavioural measures like these”, says Lobbestael.

“Since many clinical patients score highly on psychopathy and antisocial personality disorders, they tend to lie a lot.

Self-report questionnaires of aggression, which we used in previous studies, therefore proved to be very unreliable.

In the current experiments, what we’re actually measuring is not that obvious to the participants.”

Further, the behavioural measures developed by clinical psychologists can also be performed in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner that Dambacher is working with in the cognitive neuroscience department. “With the necessary modifications, we’ve been able to have participants play the reaction time game in the scanner. This allows us to see what happens in their brain while they’re playing.”

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Professor-Student

Inhibition Although this may sound straightforward, mapping aggression in the brain is far from easy. “Normal brain research focuses on very simple things, because our brain is so complicated”, says Sack. “Academics spend their entire careers trying to understand what happens in the visual system when we perceive a stripe, for example.

And now we’re talking about being aggressive in a social situation.” Therefore, a key aim has been to link the concept of aggression to a system in the brain that is already familiar. Sack: “The network we mapped during the reaction time game shows overlap with the already well-documented inhibition network in the brain.”

In other words: the (in)ability to inhibit behaviours and hold oneself back plays a role in aggressive behaviour.

Jill Lobbestael Jill Lobbestael (1980) studied Mental Health at Maastricht University, where she received her PhD in 2008. Currently, she is assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. Lobbestael also works as a therapist.

Alexander Sack Alexander Sack (1972) studied psychology in Frankfurt, Germany. He received his PhD in 2003, then relocated to Maastricht University. He has been professor of Functional Brain Stimulation and Neurocognitive Psychology since 2011.

Franziska Dambacher Franziska Dambacher (1986) studied psychology, theology and philosophy in Trier, Germany. She joined the Vision Awareness and Cognition group at Maastricht University in 2011.

Suzanne Brugman Suzanne Brugman (1986) studied psychology in Nijmegen, where she obtained master’s degrees in clinical psychology and behavioural science. She has been working at Maastricht University since 2011.

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“This is in line with studies in social psychology showing that self-control is a strong predictor of aggression”, Lobbestael continues. “We’ve also found that attention is linked to aggression. People who act aggressively are highly sensitive to negative triggers, such as insults. They also tend to misinterpret ambiguous triggers as hostile.”

Change Where does this leave us when it comes to predicting aggressive behaviour, or even modifying it? “It’s too early to say ‘this person has an attentional bias, so he’ll be aggressive in the next year’”, Brugman says. Nonetheless, the results to date are promising. Sack: “One of our recent studies has shown that aggression in healthy males can be lowered by ‘tickling’ the brain using non-invasive brain stimulation. It’s a first result and we have to be cautious, but to me this is an intriguing finding. It might be a first step towards a new sort of treatment for patients.”

“Of course we have to see whether we can replicate it and how long the effect would last”, Dambacher adds. “The best chance to lower aggression will probably be with a set of interventions, both cognitive and neuroscientific.

The strength of our team, which also includes Professor Arnoud Arntz and Teresa Schuhmann, is that it combines both worlds.”

Wealthy Dutch donate to health and wellness causes Well-off Dutch people often donate money to charitable causes focused on health and wellness. Research by Maastricht University and ABN AMRO MeesPierson, the private bank of ABN AMRO, shows that 53% of wealthy Dutch give money to philanthropic organisations in these areas. Other popular causes are environmental protection (39%) and global poverty reduction (38%).

This is the first large-scale research conducted in the Netherlands on the donation patterns of Dutch millionaires.

The project involved 741 participants with at least €1 million of liquid capital.

Almost all of the participants were philanthropically active (92%). On average they gave €11,089 per year to charitable causes, amounting to about 3.3% of their income. Those who made their fortunes in private enterprise were, in absolute terms, the most generous.

They donated an average of €14,135 annually, while those whose money came from a gift or inheritance gave around €11,824 annually. In addition, 34% of the respondents were active as volunteers for a good cause and 18% held an administrative post in a charity.

The research was conducted by researchers from the Maastricht School of Business and Economics: Professor Harry Hummels and Dr Paul Smeets, in collaboration with Professor Rob Bauer and Alexander Rontgen.

Scientists unravel cancer using a new technique Scientists from the Maastricht UMC+ and MAASTRO Clinic have developed a technique to predict the clinical course of cancer in patients with the help of medical imaging. Using radiomics, they have been able to produce a visual

‘fingerprint’ with detailed information about a tumour for the first time.

This involves standard visualisation techniques that are present in every hospital. The specific information that this technique yields enables doctors

to identify the optimal treatment for each individual patient. These highly promising results appeared in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications.

Maastricht University donates fMRI scanner to Cuban neurocentre Maastricht University has donated one of its brain scanners to the Cuban Neurosciences Center (CNEURO), a leading research centre in Latin America. The 3 Tesla fMRI scanner from the imaging lab of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience has been dismantled and prepared for transport to Cuba. Destination: Havana.

The Siemens Allegra scanner is specially designed for rapid and functional brain imaging. UM scientists have used it for research on the workings of the brain and for clinical studies on strokes, epilepsy,

tumours and multiple sclerosis.

“CNEURO has extremely talented brain researchers, whose imaging research has been hindered through the lack of an MRI scanner”, explains Rainer Goebel, UM professor of Cognitive Neurosciences.

“It’s nice that the university is able donate the scanner to a country and a research institute where it will be of real value.

This gesture will further strengthen our existing relationship and collaboration with CNEURO.”

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Sustainability

Pim Martens

Animal research

puts sustainability on the map

By Femke Kools

We’re happy for animals at the zoo to have large enclosures, but if we’ve bought a ticket we do want to be able to see them. We like to eat meat, but we’d rather not be confronted with pictures of battery cages. We may be vegetarians ourselves, but still have a big dog that eats meat. “We live in glass houses”, says Pim Martens, professor of Sustainable Development at ICIS, Maastricht University’s sustainability institute.

He recently began studying the role of animals in our society. “Through animals, you can put the sustainability debate on the map in an engaging way.”

The measure of a civilisation, Gandhi said, is how it treats its animals.

In Martens’s view, sustainability revolves around how compassionate

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people are when it comes to the world in which they live. “Animals are often left out of this discussion.”

This needs to change, he thinks. In his

research on ‘animal sustainability’, he studies the emotions of pets and the degree to which their owners recognise these emotions and feel a

connection with their pet. He also examines the role of zoos from different perspectives, and uses mathematical models to study zoonoses (diseases transmitted from animals to people) in combination with climate change. Yet more other projects are in the pipeline, such as the development of an ‘animal happiness index’ and research into the ecological ‘pawprint’ of different animals.

Overwhelming response The response to the study on pets’ emotions was overwhelming, he says enthusiastically. “We were hoping for around 300 completed surveys, plus photographs by the owners capturing an emotion of their pet. We ended up with over a thousand. Including a number of less useful photos and messages, which shows how attached people are to their pets”, he smiles. At the time of the interview, the statistical analyses of the data are in full swing, and Martens is aiming to have two publications out by autumn. “One will be on the differences between men and women in the degree to which they recognise the emotions of their pets.

In the other, we’ll look at how the stronger a bond an owner feels with their pet, the more they tend to think that the pet shares their emotions, such as happiness or sadness.” Later, he hopes to gain access to the homes of pet owners in order to study how happy pets really are.

Zoo dilemmas In cooperation with zookeepers, Martens is also keen to map the happiness of animals in zoos. He and his colleagues have already investigated the role and perceptions of sustainability among visitors and staff at the zoo in Kerkrade. He hopes to be able to spar with staff in the future on how the zoo could be made more

sustainable. “Zoos, including those in Antwerp that we’re in discussions with, are searching for their role for the future. I believe in their sincere good intentions in terms of animal welfare, but they face real dilemmas.

One young lion attracts a greater crowd than five toothless old ones.

But to avoid inbreeding dubious choices are often made, as in a Danish zoo in March, where several young and older lions were put down to make room for a new, adult male.

Zoos claim to play a role in education, but when it comes to education on sustainability there’s a lot of room for improvement, as our analysis at the Gaiapark in Kerkrade showed.”

He realises that this is a fundamentally ethical debate: do you want to keep animals in captivity for your own pleasure or not? “I don’t know if it’s feasible, but in my ideal world zoos are places where you nurture endangered species with a view to releasing them into the wild. But that wouldn’t be a park you could let people into. How do you unite the interests of humans and animals?

That’s a prime sustainability issue that fits well in an inter- and transdisciplinary institute like ICIS.” Thought provoking Martens’s goal is to keep the sustainability debate alive. “I hope to provoke people to think about things. What is and isn’t sustainable is not a black and white question. Instead you should be aware of certain choices and what they mean for the world. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, even though Europe and the US are leading the charge when it comes to issues like animal welfare. Even here the situation is often far from ideal.”

The animal sustainability research is still in its infancy, and Martens by no means has all the answers. Yet he is

happy to wade into public debates on these sorts of issues. In April the Dutch national newspaper Trouw published his opinion piece ‘The zoo has had its day’. “I realise that zoos will continue to exist, not least because they’re commercial enterprises. And I don’t know how you could actually put into practice the idea of breeding and raising animals there before releasing them into the wild. But as a scientist, as long as you keep on highlighting the questions and uncertainties involved in a theme like sustainability, you can certainly give your opinion.

I think about these issues - that’s what I’m paid for as a researcher - so I don’t think it’s right to communicate my ideas only in academic publications.

Some top scientists in the area of animals and emotions don’t want to speak out on topics like animals in the bio-industry, and that’s something I’ve never understood.”

With thanks to the Gaiapark in Kerkrade

Pim Martens Pim Martens is professor of Sustainable Development at UM’s International Centre for Integrated Assessment and Sustainable Development (ICIS). He is also the founder of AnimalWise, a “think and do tank” integrating scientific knowledge and animal advocacy to bring about sustainable change in our relationship with animals (www.animalwise.info).

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International

Household survey with one of the respondents in Liberia

Corruption in Liberia: What does it mean for development?

By Hanna McLean

With corruption and bribery running rampant throughout the world, the task of stopping them seems impossible. But what if there was an effective and objective way of measuring corruption and bribery? Would this help us to understand how corruption affects development - and how we can stop it?

Enter UNU-MERIT research fellow Eleonora (Lonneke) Nillesen. Nillesen was approached by a Dutch NGO to do an impact evaluation of one of its agricultural livelihood programmes in Liberia. “The NGO was wondering why the same programme succeeded in some communities and not in others”, she explains. “My team and I questioned if this had to do with leadership. Other studies have linked leadership and economic development, so we decided to investigate the impact that quality of leadership, which in our case was substituted by corruption, had on people’s economic behaviour in a community.”

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The next question was how to conduct the research.

“There’s a lot of macro-economic literature on corruption, but much of it uses subjective indicators like expert opinions, which may not accurately reflect a country’s actual level of corruption. We wanted to use a more objective indicator of corruption that we would be able to measure at the micro level - that is, at the level of individual villages.”

Measuring corruption objectively In Liberia, Nillesen and her team decided to gauge corruption using “gap” measurements, which identify corruption by

searching for discrepancies between different data sources.

“We mimicked the NGO’s standard procedure of giving input - agricultural seeds and small hand tools - to a community leader, who then distributes them to villagers. But we announced that bad roads were stopping us from transporting and distributing everything at once, and asked the community leaders to store the input for three days in their huts.

They were informed that, after three days, a project worker would inventory the input and distribute it to participants.”

“We didn’t tell the leaders that we’d measured the input before sending it to the villages”, Nillesen continues.

“That meant we had a baseline measurement, and any discrepancy found three days later was our measure of corruption.”

But measuring corruption is only relevant if that corruption is consequential. Therefore, Nillesen examined how corruption affects incentives for investment using two economic games. First, farmers from the villages were asked to play a standard voluntary contribution game to measure their propensity to invest in local public goods.

Second, they played a simple “heads or tails” game to gauge their taste for making uncertain investment decisions.

“We excluded some villages from the risk game because someone had tampered with the experiment”, she laughs.

“To assess risk behaviour, we used a bag containing two wooden blocks - one marked with a cross and one without.

Each villager had to draw one block from the bag, and whoever drew the block with the cross won. My colleague noticed that in some villages all respondents had drawn the block with the cross. Turns out, someone had drilled holes in the blocks with crosses, so the villagers could feel which one they needed to pick. It was frustrating at the time, but we laugh about it now.”

Bright future ahead?

While corruption and bribery continue to run rampant in Liberia, it’s hard to tell what the future holds. As Nillesen points out, however, other NGOs have put initiatives in place to increase monitoring and pay more attention to the role and incentives of local leaders. “I think progress is being made, but slowly”, she says. “As a follow-up to this study we’re now comparing our ‘objective’ measure with villagers’ own perceptions of corruption and trying to link the outcomes to the actual underlying mechanisms.”

Striking discoveries “In half of the cases, some of the input was missing and there was a strong negative correlation with the outcomes of the games”, Nillesen says. “People living in a village with a corrupt chief invested less in public goods than did other people. They were also less inclined to make risky investments. Though we never revealed the outcomes of the corruption experiment to the participants, the villagers somehow knew they couldn’t trust their leader.”

Nillesen also found differences between sexes. “Men responded to corruption by lowering their investment in public goods much more than women did. Because ‘public goods’ in Liberia often means the provision of male communal labour, men were more exposed to the negative impact of corruption because the chief could request their services whenever necessary.”

Despite these results, effecting real change in Liberia is difficult. “We covered about 1000 households, which is a small snapshot in terms of impact for the entire country”, Nillesen concedes. “Unfortunately, it hasn’t been very consequential yet.”

Overcoming challenges Nillesen and her team also faced challenges on the ground.

Eleonora Nillesen

Eleonora Nillesen Eleonora Nillesen (1975) is a research fellow at UNU-MERIT. She holds a PhD in development economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research interests include the impact of violent conflict on socioeconomic indicators and institutional change, with a particular focus on rural households in sub-Saharan Africa.

Further reading: Beekman, G., Bulte, E. & E. Nillesen (2014). Corruption, investments and contributions to public goods: Experimental evidence from rural Liberia. Journal of Public Economics 115: 37-47.

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Off the job

Albert Scherpbier

He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK

By Femke Kools

Isn’t that just always the way it goes: now that the photographer and the interviewer are watching you work, the chainsaw doesn’t want to start.

After a few attempts, the shrill sound at last cuts through the silence of the village of Wahlwiller. The professor lowers the saw into one of the many tree trunks lying ready to be cut into chunks. Soon after, his axe whizzes down with deadly accuracy: chop! Chop! CHOP!! With every stroke, Professor Albert Scherpbier clears his mind.

“And then lighting the fire - that’s just fun.”

We are at Viva Lanterne, a beautiful estate in Wahlwiller owned by friends of Scherpbier. The historic farmhouse has been renovated into a picturesque paradise, where an elderly dog snoozes in the courtyard and two rabbits hop by in the space of five minutes.

“That’s not so unusual”, the professor says. “At some point they released four rabbits here that bred with some wild ones, so those ones aren’t all that wild.”

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Log piles Behind his friends’ private garden lie two large piles of logs. Once a month, preferably more often, the dean of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences comes here to spend a day chopping wood. A normal household burns three to four cubic metres of wood per year. This farm, with its wood-fired heating and water systems, needs at least 110 cubic

metres. “Ideally I’d come every week, but I’ve got one or two other things to do”, he deadpans. Scherpbier has been sawing and chopping wood since he was 10 years old. His childhood home in Kerkrade had a woodfired stove, and it was there that the young Albert learnt the art of wood chopping from his father. Ever since, he has loved the warmth of a wood fire. “It’s completely different from

central heating. It’s just so nice to sit near it.”

Hobby hacker Scherpbier has lived in Gulpen for 14 years, where he has an indoor as well as an outdoor wood stove. There, too, he occasionally chops wood. “And because lots of people know I do, now and then I’ll chop down a tree in someone’s garden. As long as it’s not too dangerous of course, because it’s not easy to know exactly where a tree will fall.” He is ‘just’ a hobby hacker, he says. His two sons and a son-in-law, themselves hobby hackers, sometimes

Chopping wood is his main hobby; his car is a four-wheel drive Land Cruiser that he can use to move trailers full of wood. He likes being a handyman too: “Fixing things, or breaking them”, he beams. “But lighting a fire - now that is just so much fun.” Could it be that this 60-year-old still has a little boy in him? “Actually, yes”, he laughs.

“As lots of men do, I think, but they may not admit it as easily.”

come along. “My son-in-law even climbs trees that have to be chopped down. I don’t do that anymore.

They’re also faster than me now, but that’s okay. I do it for relaxation. After a day of wood chopping you get rid of so much stress, and you sleep like a log. It’s basically hitting stuff, but legal”, he chuckles. Anyone who sees him at it will understand well how it can restore the balance after a long stint of intellectual work.

Eight axes Scherpbier keeps his eight axes in his study at home. “To cut down a tree you use a different axe than you would to split kindling. This here is a splitting axe, to make chunks of wood smaller.” He rarely misses, and he has got better with age.

“You learn how to approach a block of wood. The most important things are technique and concentration. The axe should do the work. But because you’re concentrating, there’s an element of intensity in your stroke and that makes it better.” This concentration is what leaves his mind clear after a day of wood chopping. “I also enjoy the variation. Chain sawing, chopping, stacking the wood, driving it in the tractor over to the shed …”

Albert Scherpbier Albert Scherpbier (1954) is Professor in Quality improvement in medical education.

He studied Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Groningen. Since 1991 he works at Maastricht University, where he is dean of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences since 2011. In his research he is particularly interested in learning at the workplace and skills training.

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The real recovery is still coming

By Jos Cortenraad

In 1994, Coen Weddepohl from Apeldoorn made a point of choosing the fledgling programme in International Management at Maastricht University. “I was attracted to Problem-Based Learning and the international character of the university. I knew I wanted to go abroad since I was 15.”

Twenty years later, Weddepohl is a partner in a hedge fund in the heart of New York.

Not yet 40, Weddepohl has already had a rich career. But his CV is not without its gaps. “That’s right”, he says cheerfully from his apartment on the Upper West Side of New York. “After working at Robeco on the first hedge fund in the Netherlands, I was approached by a head hunter.

They wanted me to help Swiss Life, the parent company of Zwitserleven in Zurich, manage its hedge fund investments worldwide. It was a great offer, but I’d just had a serious car accident. I did the first interview in a wheelchair and the second on crutches. The prognosis wasn’t good; I was never going to play competitive sports again.”

Travel His proposal to Swiss Life was an unusual one: how about a loan for a world trip as a fringe benefit? “I wanted to head for the mountains, go climbing, get my body in order again. To my surprise, they agreed. I spent four months travelling through South America, working hard on my recovery. And I came back reborn.”

The second ‘gap’ in the timeline is in 2004. Weddepohl seems to have spent the year under a rock. “I had leukaemia,

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blood cancer. Thankfully, after a few years we found a bone marrow donor. But before the transplant I went travelling in Asia and ran the New York marathon. I wanted to - I just had to - first think things over, sort things out.

Then I had the treatment and made a full recovery.”

London Weddepohl continued his career in London at Man Group, the world’s largest hedge fund, where he set up a private equity fund for ‘green’ investments. The fund raised more than a billion dollars, but the job didn’t last. “The valuation was disappointing. So the chairman and I resigned and, together with six partners, set up Earth Capital Partners.

It also invests in sustainable energy sources: sun, wind, biomass. Our goal was to give sustainability a boost.”

But the fund didn’t take off and the partners fell out.

Weddepohl decided to take a year off and, with his Italian wife, drive from London to India. In late 2009 they moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he became a partner and shareholder of the private equity fund Alterna, which also specialises in sustainable investments.

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

Coen Weddepohl

Deals At Alterna, Weddepohl was the driving force behind major deals with plantation owners and ethanol producers.

It was four years of extensive travel, hard work and little time at home. “I learned and experienced a lot, but ultimately it wasn’t sustainable for me, and certainly not for my wife. So we moved to New York. For two years I spent one week in the US, the next in Brazil. Eventually, late last year, I quit. Brazil seems great from the outside looking in, but it’s not an easy country for foreign investors. There’s a lot of corruption and our company kept getting hit by new, restrictive legislation. I’m still a shareholder, although it’s now called Brazil Logistics Group.”

Maastricht Travel, moving, international challenges - these are the common themes running through Weddepohl’s career.

“That’s how I like it. After high school in Apeldoorn I checked out pretty much all universities in the Netherlands.

The choice for Maastricht was easy. Problem-Based Learning really appealed to me. Fewer lectures, more personal initiative, solving problems together. And the high proportion of foreign students only made the system more attractive. Germans look at financial issues differently than do Brits or the Dutch. I learned to view questions from different angles. That’s something that came in handy in my career, and I also see it in other UM graduates.

They can hold their own against people from top universities like Harvard and Oxford.”

Weddepohl looks back on his four years in Maastricht with pleasure. “It was a fantastic time. You build a special bond with people; friendships that are never the same again. Every year we rent an estate near the city with a hundred guys from my student association and spend a weekend reminiscing. It’s like going back in time, and the bond we had comes flooding back.”

Hits In New York, Weddepohl is studying price patterns in financial markets and recruiting investors for the Niederhoffer funds. Although the crisis seems to be over, it’s no easy task.

“The financial world took some major hits. Supervision of banks has been tightened and the financial market is under a big magnifying glass. There’s still too little liquidity in the market. Banks are sitting on their money, mostly forced to in order to meet stricter requirements. Companies in the US and Europe are finding it hard to get their hands on capital.

Growth in emerging economies is faltering. I’m not saying we’re heading for a new crisis, but I wouldn’t count on a real recovery for another three to five years.”

Coen Weddepohl Coen Weddepohl (1975) graduated from International Management at UM in 1998. He also studied psychology for two years. He did his internship at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and has been working abroad since 1999.

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Mirjam Lommel

Advocate of tea

By Hans van Vinkeveen

Maastricht University graduate Mirjam Lommel worked in corporate law, advising on mergers, acquisitions and the formation of limited companies. After suffering a burnout - “I missed the contact with people” - she took a surprising turn in her career. She now runs the teahouse ‘t Bluk in Laren.

Are you really happy pouring tea when you could be working on a company merger? This was the scornful response by one legal colleague to Lommel’s unusual career switch.

As a corporate lawyer, she spent years advising on million-euro transactions.

Until last year, that is, when she decided to take over a teahouse.

In hindsight, the step is not so radical. Lommel was raised in a family of

34

entrepreneurs. “From a young age I was familiar with the spirit of entrepreneurship; the perseverance and courage involved in taking responsibility.” Moreover, this wasn’t just any old takeover: ‘t Bluk was founded long ago by Lommel’s own grandparents.

Big party Lommel comes from Het Gooi, near Hilversum. The choice to study in

faraway Maastricht was one of pure chance. She came along to an Open Day to accompany a friend, who was thinking of starting Health Sciences.

She herself was on the fence: economics or law? “Then I discovered that Maastricht was the only place that offered European Law. The chance to travel and study abroad also really appealed to me.” Ultimately, Lommel opted for Dutch Law with an international twist: European Law and Language Studies.

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

She looks back on her student days as one big party. “It was a wonderful, carefree period. I found the programme easy; I didn’t have to spend weeks hitting the books. I just did a lot of partying at Circumflex.” She has good memories of the boozy songfests that the student association organised there. And of her part-time job at the café De Lanteern: “My friends hung out there all the time; you’d stay there the whole evening and end up spending all the money you’d just earned.” Her time with the student association came in handy later. “It makes you very social. You don’t easily feel lost in a big group.”

Million-euro deals Lommel specialised in corporate law and, in 2000, landed a job at a big law firm. “It was really just a continuation of my studies. Lots of new graduates started together, all of them around my age. It was hard work, but also lots of drinking, a very social environment. I thrive in an environment with lots of people.” It wasn’t overly hierarchical. “Law forms are often flat organisations where you can be quite informal with your supervisor.”

The research involved in legal work can be exciting, Lommel explains.

She advised on everything to do with corporations: foundation, organisation, mergers and acquisitions. “It’s a nice game, getting to know a company inside out before the acquisition. Then comes the negotiation process and drafting of documents, so precisely that the contract covers everything. Meanwhile the deadline is getting close and closer; will you make it or not? That can be a lot of fun.” The transactions could involve anywhere from €50,000 to tens of millions. “The numbers never really impressed me.”

Doing things Eventually, Lommel realised she was feeling uneasy. Was this really the career for her? She decided to do temp work, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. In 2008, she suffered a burnout. “I went travelling around South America. I was running away, but I didn’t know what from.”

In retrospect, she thinks the lack of human contact played a role.

“Legal work is very intangible, business-like.”

She now enjoys the daily interaction with people in the teahouse.

“I do the purchasing, receive customers and jump in everywhere: from waiting tables to washing up. When it’s busy I help set things up.

It’s great to be able to fill the day with concrete things.” Most of her legal colleagues were enthusiastic about her change of pace. “I think many lawyers secretly want to do something else.”

Mirjam Lommel Mirjam Lommel (1975) studied European Law and Language Studies at Maastricht University. She worked as a senior legal adviser, initially in various corporate law firms and later as a temp. With her brother, she has run the teahouse ‘t Bluk in Laren since last year.

UM STAR LECTURES

UM Star Lectures

Thursday 22 January 2015 www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

New:

the Maastricht Star Lectures Early next year, the Maastricht University (UM)

Alumni Office will organise 12 simultaneous lectures by Maastricht professors at alumni circles in the Netherlands and around Europe.

These ‘Maastricht Star Lectures’ are scheduled for 22 January, close to UM’s Dies Natalis celebration.

During this special event, the ‘Star’ professors will explain the latest developments in their fields to hundreds of Maastricht alumni in the regions in which they live. For example, Rob Bauer (Institutional Investors), Jim van Os (Psychiatry), Mariëlle Heijltjes (Managerial Behaviour), Rainer Goebel (Cognitive Neuroscience) and Anselm Kamperman Sanders (Intellectual Property) will hold Maastricht Star Lectures in London, Breda, Munich, Berlin and Brussels, respectively.

We hope that these simultaneous, transnational presentations will strengthen alumni’s sense of pride in and connection with UM, enabling the ‘Maastricht Star’ to shine far beyond Maastricht. In 2015 the focus is on Europe; in later years, Maastricht Star Lectures will take place in all 28 alumni circles around the world.

For more information about the content of the Maastricht Star Lectures, please visit www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

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University Fund

Professors’ Fund awards first grant The Professors’ Fund, established in 2013 by professors at Maastricht University, recently selected its first project for funding. The aim of the fund is to contribute to exceptional research and inspire excellence among young researchers. UM professors are asked to make an annual donation to this fund from the proceeds of their contract research activities.

The board - professors Rob Bauer (SBE), Wiebe Bijker (FASoS), Aalt-Willem Heringa (Law), Harm Hospers (FHS), Madelon Peeters (FPN) and Nanne de Vries (FHML) - has awarded a €4400 grant to a research project by Dr Marjo

Donners and PhD candidate Emiel van der Vorst. Dr Donner’s research group focuses on the development of new

therapies and diagnostic tools for cardiovascular diseases. Thanks to the grant, they will be able to perform several

important but expensive experiments.

This will help them to publish their results in a top scientific journal, an endeavour that strengthens UM’s position when applying for new, prestigious grants.

Founding of Elinor Ostrom Fund The proportion of women in the academic ranks shrinks the higher up you look. To promote diversity in academia, women must be supported in their academic careers.

The Elinor Ostrom Fund has been established for this purpose. Its objective is to make a financial contribution for research assistance, teaching-free periods, workshops on diversity, personal training and travel costs for learning periods abroad.

The first financial contribution was made by Dr Elisabeth Bruggen, associate professor of Marketing at Maastricht University. The fund is named in honour of Elinor Ostrom, the first female winner of a Nobel Prize for economics.

Elisabeth Bruggen

New Named Fund: Health in Slums Around one billion people live in slums. They are exposed to immense health risks, such as indoor air pollution, which causes lung cancer and COPD. The problem is greatest in India.

As part of its mission to shine a spotlight on global issues, Maastricht University is addressing this unacceptably unhealthy

36

situation on the initiative of professors Onno van Schayck and Luc de Witte.

The professors have established the Health in Slums Fund to support UM research that promotes health in slums in India and other developing countries through affordable and efficient means.

Any and all support, including from parties external to UM, will be necessary;

we are therefore also working closely with Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.

For more information, see the Named Funds section at www.ufl-swol.nl

Zweit veur Leid 2015 On Sunday 11 January 2015, the University Fund Limburg will take part in the Maastricht charity run ‘Zweit veur Leid’ for the second time. This year we’re working up a sweat for the development of medical toys for children with spasms.

Due to a lack of oxygen at birth, a car accident or a serious illness, these children have little to no coordination of their arm or hand. This means they have problems with everyday tasks such as putting on a jumper, zipping up a jacket, buttoning their trousers, lifting a cup or using cutlery.

The medical toys being developed by Dr Eugene Rameckers help remedy this: they give patients the opportunity to train their hands and arms in a fun way while they are still young, enabling them to be more independent later.

To make as large a contribution possible, we are looking for companies, organisations, colleagues, students, alumni, friends and associates to join us in supporting this cause as a runner and/or sponsor. For more information, please see www.ufl-swol.nl

ZWEIT VEUR LEID SUNDAY 11-01-2015 RUN WITH THE UM TEAM FOR: THERAPEUTICAL TOYS FOR DISABLED KIDS!

www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/running

More news In the first half of 2014, the Limburg University Fund supported 30 research projects at UM with a total of €65,000.

The Department of Knowledge Engineering, for instance, received a contribution for the replacement of two NAO Humanoid robots. With these robots students

and their supervisors take part in the International Robot Soccer Competitions, where they conduct research on all aspects of humanoid robots. At the SBE, a research project on the economic value of vaccinating children in Indonesia also received a contribution.

The Peter Thijssen Fund supports UM education and research projects that promote financial integrity in society.

For instance, Professor Ann Vanstraelen received a contribution of €6,500 for her research on the effectiveness of independent oversight of accountants.

The logos of members of the Limburg University Fund Curatorium are shown below. These companies and private individuals are highly respected for the support they give to academic research and education. The Limburg University Fund/SWOL is very grateful to its Curatorium members for their commitment to Maastricht University.

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Growing gap in workplace learning between people with low and high education levels Despite the continuing economic crisis, the degree to which workers participate in training courses has remained fairly stable in recent years. However, the gap in training participation between people with a low and a high education level is increasing. At the same time, older workers, who typically refrain from participation in training, have followed more courses in recent years.

These are some of the conclusions of

the report ‘Working and learning in the Netherlands’ recently published by Maastricht University’s (UM) Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA). The report maps trends in formal and informal learning and knowledge development in the Netherlands from 2004 to 2013.

The research was commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

The ROA study shows that workers largely maintain their skills through informal learning in the workplace. Of the total time spent on learning activities in 2013, 96% involved informal learning at work, while only 4% involved formal training courses. In addition, 41% of workers engaged in independent study at home (about three hours per month on average).

Development of new drug to treat sepsis Maastricht University researchers have developed a promising new method to treat sepsis (blood poisoning), a major cause of death in intensive care.

The method limits the complications of bacterial infections, thus providing more time to combat the blood poisoning itself. This may significantly increase patients’ chances of survival. The treatment has been tested in preclinical research with positive results. Matisse

Traffic education for young people ineffective Giving demonstrations or teaching rules of thumb in traffic education programmes is not enough to prepare adolescents aged 10 to 17 for complex and dangerous traffic situations. Teens need to apply these in-

sights in real-life traffic situations. Further, short-term education programmes are less effective than previously thought, regardless of whether they aim to increase understanding or increase fear of serious

38

Pharmaceuticals BV, a spin-off of the Basic Pharma Group, will test the thera-

peutic efficacy of the new drug in clinical trials. Mattisse has obtained an exclusive license from Maastricht University to commercialise the drug worldwide.

The Maastricht researchers Coen Hemker, Gerry Nicolaes and Chris Reutelingsperger knew that histones could be rendered harmless using heparin. However, heparin

strongly inhibits blood clotting, meaning that internal bleeding cannot be stopped.

Their invention involves a method which ensures that heparin deals with the histones, but without consequences for blood clotting. The planned development project dovetails with both the knowledge valorisation framework of Maastricht University and the strategy of the Basic Pharma Group.

accidents. These are the conclusions of PhD research by Divera Twisk, a senior behavioural scientist at the SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research.

“It has been demonstrated time and time again - including in my study - that knowledge alone is ineffective”, Twisk explains.

“Education may improve people’s awareness of dangerous situations, such as blind spots, but this does not automatically lead people to make safer choices in traffic. Inexperience plays an important role. Education programmes should therefore focus more on practical exercises

that aim not only to reduce unwanted behaviour (unintentional mistakes or deliberate violations), but also to increase self-protective behaviour (e.g. crossing the road at a location where you are visible to other traffic).”

Contents

Further 04 Leading in Learning - New Master in Sustainable Finance 06 University professor - Ron Heeren: “Designing a device is like painting a picture”

12

Regional research

Raising healthy children who feel good in their own skin and can put their talents to good use: this is the aim of the Healthy Primary School of the Future. This is a new educational concept in the Parkstad region with a curriculum revolving around a healthy diet, sport and exercise, cultural activities and the psychological wellbeing of pupils.

14 Portrait - Peter van den Bossche: He fled the golden cage 18 Opening of the Academic Year - Keynote speaker Jennifer Barnes on women in academia 20 Publication - Wiel Kusters’s biography of the literary critic Kees Fens 22 Professor–Student - Professor Alexander Sack, assistant professor Jill Lobbestael and PhD candidates Suzanne Brugman and Franziska Dambacher 26 Sustainability - Pim Martens: Animal research puts sustainability on the map 28 International - Eleonora Nillesen: Corruption in Liberia: What does it mean for development?

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Alum Coen Weddepohl

In 1994, Coen Weddepohl from Apeldoorn made a point of choosing the fledgling programme in International Management at Maastricht University. “I was attracted to Problem-Based Learning and the international character of the university. I knew I wanted to go abroad since I was 15.”

Twenty years later, Weddepohl is a partner in a hedge fund in the heart of New York.

30 Off the job - Albert Scherpbier: He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK 34 Alumni - Mirjam Lommel: Advocate of tea - Maastricht Star Lectures 36 University Fund - Professors’ Fund awards first grant - News News 10, 11, 17, 25 and 38

Profile

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About education and research at Maastricht University

“Designing a device is like painting

a picture�

Interview with university professor Ron Heeren - p6

Jennifer Barnes on

in

women

academia

Keynote speaker at the Opening of the Academic Year - p18

WTO judge

Peter van den Bossche on his bond with UM - p14