Sometimes it is difficult for students to make the connection with practical research at companies. Several initiatives in the Netherlands are trying to stimulate this. The most advanced is CHILL on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus. ‘It is really about innovative challenges for which a company lacks something.’

Science parks are often a collection of companies that support each other and work together. But in many places in the Netherlands, educational institutions are also involved in the science parks. The institution with the most experience in combining education and research is CHILL, or Chemelot Innovation and Learning Labs, which is located on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen. But those who think that CHILL has emerged from an elaborate blueprint are wrong. ‘A blueprint would lead to rigidity right from the start, while you actually need manoeuvrability and adaptive capacity’, says Gino van Strijdonck, one of the initiators of CHILL and chairman of the Material Sciences lectureship at Zuyd University.

When Van Strijdonck started at Zuyd University after a ‘typical academic career’, he was given the task of seeing what could be done with the infrastructure and knowledge of lecturers and questions from the field. ‘In all honesty, there was also a financial reason behind this’, Van Strijdonck admits. ‘In chemistry, you often have to juggle your money: there is equipment, the laboratory space, the management of it, and so on. So you have to be clever with your limited resources.’