Collaboration
Collaboration with research organisations and private parties
Utrecht is the national focal point of Earth Sciences in The Netherlands. At Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 research groups from the Faculty of Geosciences and the Faculty of Sciences study a large spectrum of topics concerning the solid Earth, its hydrosphere, its biosphere and its atmosphere. Key national applied research institutes are located on campus or in the nearby area, which stimulates collaboration and strengthens the quality of research and education.
We are a science institute and over 95% of our research funding is science-based, either direct government funding or, e.g., coming from national NWO or international EU/ERC programmes. The remainder mainly comes from research organisations in the (semi-)public sector and only for a small amount from private companies. In all collaborations, we value our scientific independence and we are always looking to engage the fundamental scientific questions behind commercial and societal challenges. Almost all our projects are long-term PhD or postdoc projects, able to publish results freely in the open literature. Only on rare occasions we enter into short-term consultancy work.
Amongst our partner institutes in the Netherlands are: , , , , , , , and .
Larger research programmes
The Department is involved in many international and national collaborations. On the national level, we specifically highlight
- , the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (concluded end 2024);
- , the Earth System Climate Feedback Centre (started 2025);
- the programme;
- the for Porous Media Science & Technology;
- the , with its ;
- EPOS-NL/EPOS-eNLarge/EPOS-eNLarge, the Dutch contribution to the European Plate Observatory System; and
- the , in particular the project
National co-ordination of policies for research and education is further strengthened via the Sector Portrait Earth and Environmental Sciences. Direct contributions from our department are:
| Theme 1 | Global carbon cycle and the role of carbon in oceans and ecosystems | Dr Sonja Geilert |
| Research officer: | Dr Jessica Volz | |
| PhD: Coastal environments as mCDR sites to mitigate climate change | starts 1-1-2026 | |
| Theme 2 | How the climate system works | Dr Marlow Cramwinckel & Prof. Dr Eelco Rohling |
| PhD: Carbon-cycle tipping points in past and future climate | Mark Elbertsen | |
| Theme 3 | Response to climate change & climate solutions | Dr Cale Miller |
| PhD: Benthic microalgae and blue carbon | hiring in progress | |
| Theme 4 | The water cycle and global change | Dr Junjie Wang |
| PhD: The coupled soil carbon-nitrogen-phosphorus cycles | Syed Ahsan | |
| Theme 6 | Energy systems, energy transition and the use of the subsurface | Dr Wenzhuo Cao & Dr Roberto Rizzo |
| Research officer: | Dr Charlotte Summers | |
| PhD: Hydrogen storage in porous geological formations | Zijia Zhu | |
| PhD: | in development | |
| Theme 7 | Circular technologies and critical raw materials | Dr Charles Beard |
| PhD: Quantifying lithium partitioning in rock-forming minerals | hiring in progress | |
| Theme 9 | Environmental quality and healthy living environment | Dr Thomas Sweijen |
| PhD: | in development |
On the international level, we participate in a number of EU-funded projects and programmes (overview on separate page). Among other international collaborations are the with the 木瓜福利影视 of Stuttgart, , and .