News

Professor Bruno de Witte is saying goodbye to Maastricht University, but not to European Law. He will continue to deliver his razor-sharp legal analyses at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. 

Professor of Clinical Chemistry Yvonne Henskens has prepared for this interview by laying out her most important cookbooks and whipping up a fig cake with eggs from her own chickens. “I prefer to make everything myself: bread, cheese, mayonnaise. I want to know how it works—in that sense I’m still a chemist.” 

They can do it already: deliver pizzas and medicines, inspect windows for cleanliness, monitor crowds. And all that autonomously, without a human driver. But how do you ensure that drones comply with laws and regulations? Professor of Private Law and technology expert Gijs van Dijck translates legal rules such that drones can understand and implement them.

After years of meaningful work at our university, Prof. Fons Coomans gave his farewell address to the Faculty of Law on 2 September, where he examined important human rights questions. How do they impact our daily lives? And how do they affect people on a personal level? Will future generations still have human rights?

Hannah Brodersen, currently working as a postdoc at the Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland), was awarded the Prize for her Doctoral thesis ‘Longer than life: How the ICTY strengthened the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia’.

It could come straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian movie A Clockwork Orange: using direct brain stimulation to reduce aggressive behaviour. For PhD student Ruben Knehans, it’s his daily business. Aside from the medical complexity, it raises all sorts of questions. Is it ethical, for example, to modify someone's behaviour? Can you justify imposing brain stimulation on convicts under criminal law? How to set rules and standards? Ruben tries to answer these questions in his PhD research at UM’s Faculty of Law.

Mark Post is a man on a mission. The environmental damage caused by livestock farming is far too great and must be dramatically reduced. His contribution? Cultured meat. These days, he’s not just a scientist, but also the director of Mosa Meat, a business that has drawn 75 million Euros in investments. And no, he’s not a vegetarian.

Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo is welcoming a new company this fall: InnerBuddies. This first Maastricht University spin-off is setting up shop at the campus with 27-year-old Jella Theeuwen at the helm as CEO.

This year, the MAASTRO clinic in Maastricht is starting to use proton therapy - the promising new form of radiation treatment for cancer. The ‘what and why’ are no longer in question. Irradiation with protons instead of with photons can make a big difference for some types of cancer. The biggest question now revolves around the ‘how’.

Although several measures have been taken in recent years to solve problems in cross-border employment, harmonisation of tax and social security systems between countries is still a bridge too far, Professor Marjon Weerepas stated in her inaugural speech entitled 'Border workers: coordinating, not because it is not possible, but because it is necessary'.