| Professor Wim Quax |
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| (Head Department of Pharmaceutical Biology, University Centre for Pharmacy) |
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The University of Groningen http://www.rug.nl being one of the oldest
research universities in Europe is an active member of the Coïmbra Group. Since its inception
in 1614 more than 100,000
graduates have been trained. Some 21,000 students are currently enrolled in
more than 160 bachelor and master programs, and some 775 students are studying
for their PhD. Every year, about 2,500 students graduate from the University,
and some 250 PhD-students defend their doctorate thesis.
As their students and staff come from the Netherlands and from at least 90
other countries, the University of Groningen is truly international. Furthermore,
with 5,000 employees and an annual budget of Euro 445 million, the host is able to create
a perfect climate for scientific investigation, educational renewal and personal development.
The University is an active participant in the Socrates and Erasmus
programmes aimed at building up a Europe of knowledge by cooperation in education.
In response to the Bologna treaty Groningen was among the first at the European mainland
to adapt to the Bachelor/Master system in 2002.
At present the very successful PhD training programmes, hitherto organised in
Research Schools, are being evolved into Graduate schools allowing a smoother entrance
of international students. The share of international students enrolling in 2004 in the
Faculty Bachelor and Master programmes was 18.7 % with a 40 % share of female students. At
the level of PhD the share of international students is 25.6% with a share of 45% for female students.
The graduate school GUIDE:The GUIDE Training Program accommodates a large population of PhD-students with
various backgrounds (a.o. medicine,medical biology, molecular biology, pharmacy).
The average yearly flow of PhD-students into GUIDE is around 50. The school offers a
specific scholarship program for foreign PhD students, the Ubbo Emmius program.
At this moment, 30% of the PhD-students are from outside the Netherlands.
Therefore, an extensive, English-spoken-training program, with accompanying
capacity is offered. Parts of this program will be integrated into the Antibiotarget research training (see
section B2.2).
A further indicator of the international orientation of GUIDE is the
active participation in two European
Graduate Schools, bilateral collaborations with a German university
by the German Research Community (DFG) and the Dutch Organisation of Scientific
Research (NWO). EGCs have been created to foster exchange of PhD training programs at an international level. GUIDE
participates in the following European Graduate Colleges:
(i) European Graduate College ‘Regulatory Systems’, partner: Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany.
(ii) European Graduate College ‘Vascular Medicine’, partner: Ruprecht Karls Universität in Heidelberg and Mannheim, Germany.
Prof. Quax is the co-founder and vice-speaker of the 1st EGC with the full title: "Regular circuits in cellular systems: fundamentals and biotechnological applications". This PhD training program is jointly executed by the Ruhr-University Bochum, the University of Düsseldorf (IMET), and the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, with partner 4 of this EST proposal (Prof. Jaeger) being an active member.
The infrastructure for the specific research training in this host institution is described above (Point B3.1 under the University of Groningen). In addition the University of Groningen and the Graduate School GUIDE have a well established support infrastructure for complementary training offering the following:
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Department of Pharmaceutical Biology |
For additional support and student mentoring the PhD students can use facilities of the University of Groningen as well as of the Graduate School GUIDE. The main offices to contact are:
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Professor Wim Quax, Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology http://www.farmbio.nl (The Netherlands), aims at the exploitation of novel routes for drug biosynthesis. Their major research topics are: (i) functional analysis of protein secretion factors in Bacillus and Pseudomonas species (ii) enzyme engineering through directed molecular evolution and phage display selection, (iii) regulation, maturation and transport of exoenzymesP.aeruginosa . Recently this has resulted in the identification of quorum quenching enzymes that interfere with P. aeruginosa virulence. Inhalation apparatus for studying drug delivery in a cystic fibrosis mouse model is available. His Department is well equipped for the proposed training with excellent facilities for DNA, protein and drug analysis. They are also actively involved in collaborative research with industry on antibiotics. The Department was rated “excellent” in the recent international peer review of research www.qanu.nl (13/10/2004).
National and international collaborations: The department of pharmaceutical biology has close and on-going collaborations with the leaders of the other institutions from this EST project funded by one EU Framework V project and a College. In addition to the international collaboration with the EST members, various aspects of protein folding, secretion and virulence of enzymes from Pseudomonas aeruginosa are being studied with Prof J.Tom Utrecht and Prof. B. Dijkstra Groningen. Other international collaborators include Prof.L. Serrano (EMBL), Prof. L. Wyns Brussels), Dr. Msadek (Institut Pasteur), Prof.D. Ehrlich (INRA), Prof. D. Haas (Lausanne, Prof. Schumann (Bayreuth) and Prof. C. Harwood (Newcastle). Our industry partners include DSM bv (Delft, Solvay Pharmaceuticals (Amsterdam), Genencor International (Leiden), Lonza Ltd. (Visp, Switzerland), Symrise GmbH; Co. KG (Holzminden), and Novozymes (Copenhagen, Denmark). Our SME partners include IQ Corporation and IMEnz Bioengineering (Groningen, Zebra Biosciences (Enschede) and Signalomics (Münster). These industrial partners collaborate with us in the fields of microbial genomics, enzyme gene expression, and optimisation, directed evolution and biotechnological applications and they have agreed to host PhD students working in the framework of the EST project.
Work packages associated with these Fellowships as indicative of the type of postgraduate research training to be provided is:
WORKPACKAGE 4
Deliverables:
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