I&I investigators participate in Centre for Unusual Collaborations grant projects
Two teams with involvement of I&I investigators within the strategic alliance between TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht have received an Unusual Collaborations Grants for projects set to address societal challenges.
The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) of the alliance has awarded these projects because they are unusual in their composition of the teams, the methodologies, the process or the output. The decision on the amount of each grant has been unusual as well, as all participants have worked this out together in a participatory budget meeting. A total of 830.000 euro has been divided across 4 projects. The two awarded projects with involvement of I&I investigators are:
The Power of One: Towards the Representation of Unheard and Unseen Individuals in the Hospital, Workplace and Neighbourhood
Daniel Lakens (TU/e), Mathias Funk (TU/e), Daniel Tetteroo (TU/e), Monique Simons (WUR), Jojanneke van der Toorn (UU), Merel van Goch (UU), Martine Veldhuizen (UU), Lieke Stelling (UU), Marianne Boes (UMC Utrecht)
The project aims to find ways to collect data of people currently not included in abstract categories, datasets, or algorithms and will thus improve understanding of the mismatch between the studied sample and the underlying population, and formulate suggestions to make data collection efforts more inclusive. The project will do so by collaborating with professionals in the field to identify people who are not represented by the data used by researchers and governments to make decisions. The project sees the unseen and hears the unheard.
Defeating Chronic Pain
Yoeri van de Burgt (TU/e), Sylvia Brugman (WUR), Laura Winkens (WUR), Tessa van Charldorp (UU), Madelijn Strick (UU), Janny de Grauw (UU), Frank Meye (UMC Utrecht), Martijn Froeling (UMC Utrecht), Hanneke Willemen (UMC Utrecht), M. Rijsdijk (UMC Utrecht)
This unusual collaboration aims to better understand what chronic pain actually is to those experiencing it, before redefining pain phenotypes. The project’s approach will be first to explore how to come to a multidisciplinary, multifaceted (re)definition of chronic pain in both animals and humans by combining the available expertise and knowledge within ten research disciplines. It will supplement this with input and feedback from chronic pain patients. Second, the project will uncover what new pain phenotypes can be defined to better understand a patients’ pain experience.
The other two awarded projects are
- Structures of Strength: Unusual Collaborations on Porous Material: A Solution for Health, Food and Environmental Challenges – UMC Utrecht involvement: Noortje Ijssennagger and Yvonne Vercoulen
- Towards a Data-driven Dashboard to Support a Socially-just Transition to Circular Agriculture (no UMC Utrecht involvement).
Centre for Unusual Collaborations
The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CoCu) is a new strategic alliance between TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht. It aims to find solutions for global challenges by stimulating and facilitating opportunities for cooperation between researchers of the institutions of the strategic alliance. The Unusual Collaborations Grants are designed to take an idea or project further by enabling innovative, interdisciplinary science and scholarship that aims for societal impact. The teams include researchers from at least three institutes. For more info, go to https://ewuu.nl/en/