CuriousU 2016 – Winning Participants Recap

Thursday, September 15, 2016

CuriousU participants
CuriousU participant winners Heather McNeil (left), and Patricia Duong (right) pictured with their sponsors Olga Kulyk and Lisette van Gemert, University of Twente, The Netherlands

The CuriousU experience is a unique festival-style summer school experience held at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. The summer school was held August 14-23, 2016 and offered academic courses, music, sports, theatre, and inspirational speakers within various research fields such as entrepreneurship, risk management, smart cities and the future of health technology.  CuriousU 2016 and was a huge success with 180 participants from 40 countries. 

CBB held an internal competition to student members in spring of 2016 for a chance to win free registration to the event.  Recipient winners were Heather McNeil, a PhD student in Applied Health Sciences, and Patricia Duong, a Undergraduate student in Chemical Engineering. Here’s what they had to say about the program:

“We both had an amazing time at CuriousU and would strongly recommend it for students who are interested in learning while travelling and having fun. We had the opportunity to interact with students from around the world. The festival-style summer school had a very friendly and open environment where they really focused on maintaining a great experience with inspirational speakers every morning and activities like cha cha dance lessons, an illusionist show, live music, and exploring Dutch food/culture in between classes. The courses were really interesting and applicable, giving us the opportunity to learn things both related and outside of our fields of study. We were also given one free day to travel or relax.”

Heather was a part of the Future of Health Technology track where she saw firsthand some of the world-class innovations currently in development to respond to priority health issues, including visits to the Nano chip and robotics labs.  On her free day, Heather visited the Dementia Village, De Hogeweyk, an innovative model of Dementia care.

Pat participated in the Mix and Match program where she joined lectures from different classes every day learning about topics including the science of health and happiness, the physics of granular materials, and risk management in innovation. On her free day, Pat toured around Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Pat and Heather also had the opportunity to meet with two UT researchers involved in the recent MOU between both Universities (pictured above). 

For more information: CuriousU Summer School 2017