What is the topic?

This webinar focuses on the use of Student Research Hub Networks to enable challenge-based, research-driven laboratory education. The session introduces the hub network developed in Utrecht, explaining its origins, structure, and role in connecting teaching labs across disciplines. The Health Challenge serves as a central case study, illustrating how students from different backgrounds collaboratively develop research proposals for complex health problems and how selected projects are implemented in laboratory courses through the hub network. The webinar situates this approach within broader international developments such as CHARM-EU.

What will you gain?

Participants will gain practical insight into how interdisciplinary, research-driven lab education can be organized at scale. You will learn how a Student Research Hub Network can facilitate access to diverse laboratory infrastructure, support collaboration between departments, and enhance student learning outcomes. Through a short interactive mini-challenge, you will experience the difference between disciplinary and interdisciplinary research thinking. The session provides concrete ideas, design principles, and inspiration that can be adapted to your own educational context, whether you are a teacher, lab coordinator, or educational developer.

What will the session look like?

The session combines a short informative presentation with an interactive mini-challenge. After an introduction to the Student Research Hub Network and the Health Challenge, participants engage in breakout-room discussions—first within a discipline and then interdisciplinary—followed by short plenary reflection and discussion.