Every year, the education team hands out prizes to four students with an impressive record in their first year of the master’s programme. We usually hand out these prizes at the master’s BBQ in September, but due to the corona restrictions, we decided to postpone the announcement until now. This year’s winning students are selected by the education team out of the cohort 2019-2020, so those who started in September 2019 or February 2020. We look for students who impressed us, for example with high grades, good performance in difficult circumstances, outstanding progress or other impressive efforts in the programme. The prize consists of a gift card of 50 euros. The winners of 2019-20 are, in no particular order ...

Femke van der Heijden

Femke is one of our Chemistry and Business Studies students. This track requires some good planning to fit all the components with sometimes overlapping schedules in the two years of a master’s. Femke collected 63 EC in her first year, with 15 EC of the Business studies courses and 48 EC of her Chemistry components. Her average grade was an impressive 8.75 with perfect 10’s for both SOC and MOC. Femke’s achievement is even more impressive if you know that she started the programme with an HBO bachelor. She is currently working on her Chemistry major research project with Dima Filippov. 

Thijmen Mostert

Thijmen follows the LST Research track. Since September, he has been working on his major research project at the ErasmusMC. Last year, he acquired 64 EC of LST courses with an average grade of 8.73. Coming from the bachelor LST, Thijmen transitioned into the master with ease. He altruistically put in an extra effort by helping other students who struggled more with the way of studying and exams we have here. We really appreciate such efforts from our students.

Laurens ter Haar

When Laurens applied for the master LST after his bachelor Biomedical Sciences, the Board of Admissions expressed some doubts about whether he would be able to keep up with the more chemical and molecular courses in our programme. Laurens has clearly proved that he belongs here by finishing 56 EC last year with an average grade of 8.63, even though he did not actually start accumulating EC points until the second period! 

Roy Steneker

Chemistry student Roy finished his first academic year with the highest grade average of his cohort: an impressive 8.94 over 54 EC. He has no grades below 8.0, so if he keeps on this trajectory, he has a good chance of receiving his master’s diploma with the judicium ‘summa cum laude’. Such an honour is achieved only about once every two years. Last September, Roy started his major research project with Hermen Overkleeft at BioSyn.