Education

Maastricht University (UM) is a research university with a strong international focus and a distinctive educational approach based on small-scale, active learning. A core feature of UM’s education is Problem-Based Learning (PBL), in which students work in small tutorial groups on real-world questions and cases. This approach supports the development of in-depth knowledge while strengthening academic and professional skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and self-directed learning. Within this setting, students are encouraged to actively engage with scientific questions and to interact directly with researchers and teaching staff.

UM’s educational philosophy is grounded in the core PBL principles of constructive, collaborative, contextual, and self-directed learning (CCCS). These principles are embedded across programmes and educational formats at UM, and they support a learning environment in which students actively engage with knowledge, apply it in context, and interact closely with teaching staff and researchers. Through this approach, UM aims to prepare students to become academically strong, socially engaged, and internationally oriented professionals. 

Within this educational context, our department contributes to knowledge development and innovation aimed at improving health, healthcare, and society across multiple domains, including clinical care, public health, lifestyle, nutrition, occupational health, and prevention. We develop, coordinate, and deliver education in (translational) genomics and related disciplines, with a strong emphasis on translating molecular and multi-omics insights into meaningful applications in prevention, diagnostics, prognosis, and intervention.

Our teaching combines fundamental concepts with practical application and highlights the importance of context, including healthcare, work, lifestyle, environment, public health, and clinical practice. We contribute to courses, lectures, tutorials, and practicals in genomics, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and multi-omics, and support training in study design, data interpretation, and critical appraisal. In addition, we supervise literature reviews, research assignments, and thesis projects, and provide research skills training in scientific writing, presentation, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

We also contribute to interdisciplinary education in toxicology, nutrition, metabolism, oncology, reproduction, mental health, neuroscience, and data science. Our teaching includes applications of genomics and omics-based approaches in prevention, risk stratification, diagnosis, and personalised health and medicine. Beyond degree programmes, we provide training for professionals ranging from junior researchers to experienced scientists, toxicologists, and healthcare professionals.

Our teaching primarily targets bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD students within the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML), the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN), and the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), including the campuses in Geleen and Venlo. In addition, we contribute to education within the research institutes GROW, NUTRIM, and MHeNS, where we teach state-of-the-art methods and applications in translational genomics in the broadest sense.

A key part of our educational mission is the supervision of junior and senior internships for bachelor’s and master’s students, both within our department and in external settings. We also host students from Universities of Applied Sciences and from other universities and research institutes. Our internship programme reflects the breadth of our research activities within GROW, NUTRIM, and MHeNS, with a strong focus on translation to health, healthcare, and prevention.

Internship themes include:

• Genomics and molecular profiling (Clinical Genomics, Functional Genomics, Epigenomics, Transcriptomics, Next-Generation Sequencing)
• Omics technologies and data integration (Metabolomics, Proteomics, Multi-omics Data Integration, Bioinformatics and Data Science, Systems Biology and Systems Medicine)
• Toxicology and safety sciences (Toxicogenomics, Predictive Toxicology, Human (Cancer) Risk Assessment, Food and Chemical Safety)
• Nutrition, metabolism, and lifestyle health (Nutrigenomics, Precision Nutrition and Metabolic Health, Obesity, Diabetes, and Cardiometabolic Research)
• Cancer and reproduction (Cancer Biology and Translational Oncology, Oncology and Reproduction, Reproductive Health and Development)
• Mental health and neuroscience (Mental Health and Neuroscience, Neurogenomics and Neurobiology)
• Mitochondrial and rare disease research (Primary Mitochondrial Disease, Mitochondria in Complex Disorders, Rare Diseases)
• Regenerative and translational medicine (Muscle Stem Cell Therapy, Biomarker Discovery and Validation)
• Population health, epidemiology, and prevention (Molecular Epidemiology, Molecular Epidemiology and Prevention, Public Health Genomics and Prevention, Healthy Ageing and Chronic Disease)

Depending on the project, internships may involve experimental laboratory work, computational analyses, clinical or cohort-based data, and interdisciplinary collaboration across research domains. If you are interested in an internship, please consult this website or contact one of our staff members.

In addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching, our department also contributes to postgraduate education. This includes the Postgraduate Education in Toxicology (PET), a Dutch national vocational postgraduate training programme in toxicology. Within PET, our department coordinates the Systems Toxicology course, which introduces systems toxicology and genomics technologies, including gene expression profiling using RNA sequencing and microarray platforms, with a strong focus on toxicological applications.

We also contribute to the BioSB research school course “Multi-omics and data sciences in complex diseases”, which focuses on the use of high-throughput screening technologies and integrative data science approaches to better understand multifactorial diseases.