While the main focus of UCR is teaching, a strong emphasis is placed on undergraduate and faculty research too.

In your final year at UCR, you will need to complete a Senior Project.  This Senior Project is an independent piece of research within your major department, and it allows you to expand on a topic that you have found to be the most interesting. You do not have to do your Senior Project entirely on your own – you will always be supervised by a Faculty member or an expert in the field in order for you to deliver the best piece of work possible. Check out some of the Senior Projects that have come before you in the videos below! You can also read more about research at UCR.

Faculty and Undergraduate Research

Many of our professors engage in research projects at UCR and Utrecht University. This produces output in the form of papers, conference proceedings, books, research grants, and Ph.D. defenses at Utrecht University. Most importantly, this enriches all courses and individual projects that students engage in at UCR.

As a student, you are expected to do research from the day you enter the college. Doing research is about being curious. You think about the methods you need to use to satisfy that curiosity, keeping in mind the knowledge that has already generated by academia. What better way to learn than through research. Together with professors, you will work on all kinds of research projects, starting in your first semester with a statistics project, an engineering project, or a multidisciplinary project around a societal challenge such as the Energy Transition. In later semesters, more advanced research starts in the classroom with a research design session and ends up with Faculty members and students pursuing a research project together. You will learn how to collect data, analyze them and write about your findings in controllable ways. Regularly, students go to conferences to present the work and regularly publish their work together as joint authors in peer reviewed journals. Each UCR student finishes their education with a research project called a Senior Project, which you can check out above.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
micro-organisms and health class

Internships and Outreach

Undergraduate research is often combined with internships in medical, governmental, academic, and cultural institutions in the Netherlands and abroad. UCR’s undergraduate research fund offers each of its students financial support for research internships and conference visits. The work students do in research or internships is usually related to their Senior Project.

UCR students and professors also engage in outreach projects within the local community. This includes giving special lectures for primary school children at the library or hosting groups of high school students at UCR. Finally, UCR is also host to many academic conferences and lectures from leading academics throughout the year.