Research Without Borders: UT and UM Award Four Strategic Collaboration Grants

The University of Twente and the University of Münster have announced the recipients of their Strategic Collaboration Grants 2026, four joint research teams working at the intersection of health, technology, and life sciences.

Now in its eighth year, the grants programme is one of the most tangible expressions of the strategic partnership between the two universities. Each selected team receives up to €40,000 for approximately six months, with the explicit goal of initiating or deepening collaboration and preparing joint bids for larger external funding.

This year's call focused on health, priority area for both institutions, and the four selected projects reflect the breadth of what that means in practice.

• Smarter patient flow in hospitals: Prof. André Karch (Münster) and Prof. Richard Boucherie (Twente) will develop predictive models for patient transfers to aftercare facilities, supporting more efficient hospital capacity management at a time when bed blocking is a persistent challenge across healthcare systems.
• Understanding the brain's immune response: Prof. Gerd Meyer zu Hörste (Münster) and Prof. Kerensa Broersen (Twente) are combining neurology, stem cell technology, and organ-on-chip systems to map how nerve cells and immune cells interact in a human midbrain model, research with implications for a wide range of neurological conditions.
• Breath as a diagnostic tool: Prof. Martin A. Kriegel (Münster) and Prof. H.E. Vonkeman (Twente) will explore whether breath-based biomarkers can enable earlier detection of interstitial lung disease in patients with connective tissue disorders, a condition where early diagnosis significantly changes outcomes.
• Stress, physiology, and social interaction: Prof. Mitja Back (Münster) and Dr Ying Wang (Twente) are developing a computational framework that combines wearable sensing, physiology, and social interaction modelling to better understand how stress manifests in everyday life.

Together, the four projects illustrate what becomes possible when researchers from complementary institutions work across the Dutch-German border, and when that collaboration is structurally supported over time. For TECH.LAND, whose network spans exactly this region, this is science happening in our own backyard.

We look forward to following the progress of all four teams!
For more informations, have a look on the UT website.