On Thursday 7 April, a delegation from the UT visited their colleagues at VU Amsterdam to take their collaboration a step further. It was also a good opportunity to finally meet each other live, after all the Team and Zoom meetings over the past two years. There was also good news. Rectores Jeroen Geurts (VU Amsterdam) and Tom Veldkamp (UT) announced that the Steering Committee had doubled the budget for stimulating research within the partnership. This means that more than half of the proposals for the internal call can be approved.
The meeting started with a warm welcome by Mirjam van Praag and Vinod Subramaniam, presidents of the Executive Board of VU Amsterdam and the UT. Van Praag proudly mentioned the results of the collaboration to date. In September, the joint Master's track in Sports Data Science was launched at the UT and in the summer, the first batch of Mechanical Engineers will graduate at VU Amsterdam.. And, if the CROHO application is approved, students will be able to study Creative Technology (CreaTe) at the VU Amsterdam next year: the second technical bachelor's programme at the VU Amsterdam. In his welcome speech, Subramaniam underlined the strategic importance of the collaboration.
Active use
The presidents and rectores of both universities, all the deans involved, the leaders and coordinators of the impact coalitions, policy staff and colleagues working on the new CreaTe programme at the VU; they were all present on 7 April. The meeting was actively used for various consultations, including a meeting of the Steering Committee and meetings between colleagues involved in the development of education and research.
Experiment with muscle tension
The guests were also given a tour of the campus and visited the Faculty of Behavioural and Physical Sciences, amongst others. The day before, students of the joint Master's track Sports Data Science had conducted an experiment on muscle tension during cycling. Especially for the visitors, they were happy to repeat the experiment. This was also very instructive for the VU Amsterdam staff members present. On Thursday 22 September, a delegation from VU Amsterdam will visit the UT.
