Three competitive grants for Bijvoet PhD candidates

The Bijvoet Center has awarded 6 months project grants to three PhD candidates. The grants were awarded competitively based on peer review of research proposals written by the PhD candidates themselves. The projects will be part of the NWO funded Graduate Programme, coordinated by dr. Stefan Rüdiger, who was impressed by the quality of the applications: “We were very proud that we are able to support originality and independence of our PhD candidates and at the same time strengthen links within the Bijvoet.”

Out of the 10 submitted research proposals, the following three projects were selected for funding:

Xue Bao, MSc (research group Membrane Biochemistry & Biophysics)
Project: Deciphering the mechanism that allows the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to live without the essential membrane lipid phosphatidylcholine

Matthijs van Haren, MSc (research group Drug Discovery & Chemical Biology)
Project: Transition state mimics as valuable mechanistic probes for structural studies with methyltransferases enzymes

Daniel Fonseca, MSc (research group Cellular Protein Chemistry)
Project: Unravel the role of chaperone Hsp90 in folding of the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane conductance Regulator (CFTR)