46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Alicja Mastylak

  Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences | Bachelor European Public Health

"The “Blessing” of Pregnancy? Barriers to Accessing Adequate Maternal Care in Poland: A mixed-methods study among women, healthcare providers, and decision-makers"


Alicja's elevator pitch
Adequate and respectful maternal care is fundamental to maximising health outcomes of mothers and newborns. In my thesis, I examined the accessibility of adequate maternal care in Poland, where good maternal health indicators co-exist with poor experience of care. Results of a survey with women who recently gave birth and interviews with healthcare professionals and decision-makers highlighted barriers related to inadequate provider communication and attitudes, high share of out-of-pocket payments, informalities in seeking quality, and shortages of maternal care providers. Together, these create an environment in which adequacy of care can be characterized more as an outlier than a norm.

Ailcja Mastylak
Alicja Mastylak

Congratulations Alicja  

In this video Alicja is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Evgenia Kokkou

  Faculty of Law | Bachelor European Law School

"The Applicability of Article 102 TFEU in the Digital Marketplace: Data-Related Abuses of Dominance by Online Platforms"


Evgenia's elevator pitch
Big data has become the new force for the EU digital marketplace and dominant online platforms rely on this data-gathering power to distort the competition with their rivals. Due to the absence of legal rules governing, in particular, the abuse of dominance by online platforms, the big players keep operating in a monopolistic way until they win a competition that should never end. This thesis assesses whether Article 102 TFEU can fill this gap in the legislation. However, the tricky question is to answer how it is possible to measure the effect of Article 102 in atypical situations, where instead of money, there is big data and instead of financial damage, there is an excessive access to user data.

Kokkou
Evgenia Kokkou

Congratulations Evgenia

In this video Evgenia is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Ben Fishman

  Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience | Bachelor Psychology

"SENCO-AI: Speeding up fNIRS-based Communication"


Ben's elevator pitch
Some patients with severe motor paralysis lose their ability to communicate, which is a profoundly isolating experience with dire consequences for their social life, well-being and recovery. Neuroelectric brain-computer-interface spellers can restore communication to those patients, but not all patients are able to gain control over them. For those cases, haemodynamic spellers serve as an alternative. Unfortunately, haemodynamic spellers are currently too slow and too cumbersome to allow natural, free-flowing conversation. SENCO-AI is a novel haemodynamic speller based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy that implements a number of features making it faster, more convenient and more accessible than previous haemodynamic spellers.

Ben Fishman
Ben Fishmann

Congratulations Ben 

In this video Ben is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Nino Luijpen

  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Bachelor Arts and Culture

"Acting Within the Story: Exploring the Immersive Traits of Interactive Narrative Games. A Case Study of Until Dawn"


Nino's elevator pitch
Entering the realm of Game Studies, my thesis homes in on the concept of immersion. I set out to examine how immersion operates in the game Until Dawn, as the interactive narrative genre to which this game belongs has experienced a remarkable growth in presence and popularity over the years. Building on a model of immersion, as proposed by Gordon Calleja (2011), I engaged in an extensive range of qualitative interviews, which ultimately allowed me to grasp the elements that absorb the player into the game. Various dimensions of immersion were discussed, as the provided insights aptly shed light on the sheer complexity of immersive gaming.

Nino Luijpen
Nino Luijpen

Congratulations Nino 

In this video Nino is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Anouk Blanken

  Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences | Bachelor Health Sciences

"Psychosocial problems in deaf or hard of hearing children: a review"


Anouk's elevator pitch
Deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children are at increased risk of developing psychosocial problems, including emotional, behavioral, and social problems, resulting in a reduced quality of life. Early detection and intervention are essential to prevent this. Over the past five years, many studies have been performed evaluating the psychosocial problems in DHH children. This review summarizes the recent advances made on the association between behavioral, social, and emotional problems in DHH children in contrast to normal-hearing children.

Anouk Blanken
Anouk Blanken

Congratulations Anouk 

In this video Anouk is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Konstantin Felix Scheuermann

  School of Business and Economics | Bachelor Economics and Business Economics

"On the Impact of European Cohesion Policy - Does Regional Public Procurement Management Matter?"


Konstantin's elevator pitch
While the positive impact of European Cohesion Policy (CP) on regional economic outcomes has been established through quasi-experimental methods, causal estimates of heterogeneous treatment response remain largely unexplored. In this paper, I investigate the role of public procurement management (PPM) as a source of heterogeneity, altering the impact of CP on regional economic outcomes. I estimate a fuzzy regression discontinuity with heterogeneous treatment and find a significant positive impact of more efficient PPM on the effectiveness of convergence transfer treatment. This has crucial policy implications, calling for higher quality of regional public administrations in treatment regions to foster local investment intensity, employment rates, and GDP growth.

Konstantin Scheuermann
Konstantin Felix Scheuermann

Congratulations Konstantin

In this video Konstantin is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Krzysztof Cybulski

 Faculty of Science and Engineering | Bachelor Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

"Reliable Deep Regression Using Overhead Images"


Krzysztof's elevator pitch
Deep neural networks are a family of powerful mathematical models which can predict high level information from raw data, such as images. They're particularly useful for researchers who wish to analyse a lot of images in an automated manner. Unfortunately, they're extremely complex and thus difficult to interpret statistically. There is a promising methodology - conformal prediction - which may alleviate this, as it allows for constructing predictive intervals on top of arbitrary models. In this thesis, I investigated the statistical properties of various configurations of deep neural networks with conformal prediction for the task of predicting neighbourhood statistics from aerial photographs. I discovered that conformal predictive intervals suffer from an unfortunate spatial bias, and looked into possible ways of correcting it.

cybulski
Krzysztof Cybulski

Congratulations Krzysztof

In this video Krzysztof is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Marcel Reddig

  School of Business and Economics | Bachelor International Business

"Does offering a fully traceable coffee improve small holder coffee farmer's livelihood? - a case for blockchain based traceability systems in Ethiopia's coffee industry"


Marcel's elevator pitch
Modern supply chains often involve hundreds of actors, making it nearly impossible to trace the original farm on which a product like coffee was grown. Instead of letting consumers do the research, my thesis proposes a framework that can be implemented by small-scale farmers themselves at a minimal cost. Through the use of blockchain technology, farmers can trace their coffee throughout the local supply chain, offering a more expensive, but fully traced coffee in an elsewise highly competitive export market. As the competitive advantage was created by the farmers themselves, my study hopes to find organic improvement in farmers’ livelihoods.

Marcel Reddig
Marcel Reddig

Congratulations Marcel

In this video Marcel is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Bente Vissel

  Faculty of Science and Engineering | Bachelor University College Maastricht

"Entraining neural rhythmicity – Investigating the impact of musical expertise on neural entrainment in speech"


Bente's elevator pitch
Language and music are closely intertwined. Research in the past decades has explored how the properties of music and language affect each other, suggesting that neural activity in the processing of these stimuli overlaps. Therefore, this thesis investigated whether regularity in language, associated with rhythm in music, moderates neural entrainment to speech. Furthermore, it investigated whether musical expertise influenced this neural entrainment. The thesis was written in the first phase of the research and therefore the sample size was too small to draw significant conclusions. Nevertheless, reflecting on these results led to important implications concerning the connection in neural processing between language and music.

Bente Vissel
Bente Vissel

Congratulations Bente 

In this video Bente is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.

46th Dies Natalis

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2021 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Muharrem Tezbasaran

  Faculty of Science and Engineering | Bachelor University College Venlo

"Identification of Key Players within a Social Network"


Muharrem's elevator pitch
Due to the easy access and availability of major social media networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, one might assume that reaching out to a large audience and spreading information about an idea might be relatively simple. However, the social network that we take part in might be smaller than we think, affecting how fast and widely an innovation might be diffused. In my study, I analyzed the emerging network of a mobile health intervention named TeleCheck-AF. The aim of this analysis has been to identify which Twitter users can be considered key players that facilitate the diffusion of an innovation effectively.

Muharrem Tezbasaran
Muharrem Tezbasaran

Congratulations Muharrem

In this video Muharrem is addressed briefly by the immediate supervisor.