‘Together you get further’; that is explicitly the message Emma Moonen and Nienke van Dongen want to convey. After Emma won the PhD competition of the 4TU.Health centre, they contacted each other to conduct research together. And with success: a few months later, they presented their findings at the IEEE Biosensors conference in Cambridge. ‘Our story proves that cooperation and enthusiasm can get you far.’
Early 2023, Emma Moonen decided to register for the PhD competition of the 4TU.Health centre, a competition in which PhD students (health and technology domain) of the technical universities present their research and explore opportunities for future collaborations within the technical universities. Emma: ‘It seemed like a great opportunity to practice presenting my research.’ She eventually ended up as one of the three winners of the competition. By winning, she received an amount of €5,000 to spend on a project of her choice, in collaboration with a PhD candidate from another technical university.
Complementary knowledge
Emma, a Mechanical engineering graduate who is working at Eindhoven University of Technology, developed during her PhD research an innovative device that is capable of analysing tiny amounts of sweat from a fingertip or arm. This device could potentially be used in the future to determine whether someone is ill. After winning the prize, Emma contacted Nienke from the University of Twente, whom she had previously met at a conference. This proved to be a crucial moment: from then on, everything gained momentum…
Nienke, originally a chemist, explains: 'We are working on the development of biosensors that can measure changes in DNA in blood or urine.' Such techniques could eventually be used in population research (in the field of cancer), for example.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration
Their areas of expertise matched perfectly, which led them to jointly investigate whether the biosensors Nienke works with could also be applied to sweat, Emma's field of research. Driven by curiosity and enthusiasm, they decided to retreat to the laboratory in Enschede for a week, where they worked intensively together on this issue.
New steps in detecting skin diseases
Emma: ‘To our surprise, this turned out to work quite well. Skin infections are becoming increasingly common. It is useful to be able to detect these diseases accurately. We have now demonstrated that you can also measure in sweat with Nienke’s biosensors. A possible next step is to develop a sensor that can detect certain skin diseases in sweat.
‘We were so excited about our results that we decided to share this knowledge within the IEEE Biosensors community’, Nienke continues. ‘Apparently they thought the same about it, because we got the chance to give a presentation at this conference in Cambridge and to submit a paper for publication in the conference proceedings.’
Collaboration as a success factor
What was the role of the 4TU.Health centre in this success? Emma: ‘We had met before. When I won the prize and contacted Nienke again, we were able to start a collaboration. In our opinion, bringing together young, enthusiastic researchers is an important success factor. They have the time and energy to initiate new projects and achieve great results together. Moreover, it is just incredibly nice to take a look at another technical university early in your career and share knowledge with each other. So, it is definitely valuable to visit one of the other technical universities from time to time.'