Céline van Haaren

After moving from the UK to the Netherlands, I joined the Dutch branch of TYC as a National Board member. In this position, I was responsible for all partnerships with the organisation, including those with large strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey, BCG and Bain. One of the main activities in my role as a board member was organising trainings and events together with the partners. Being in such close contact with the people at these firms taught me how to communicate professionally and effectively, and how to prepare for and lead important meetings.

In this 9-month project at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research I worked on the development and validation of an analytical method for the characterisation and quantification of liposomal peptide-based cancer vaccines. This research project was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Jeroen Heuts and Prof. Dr. Wim Jiskoot. Finally, our work was published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

During my third project at TYC, I became project manager for one of the projects, which was a small MedTech startup. Leading my team of student consultants and being in charge of the project allowed me to develop my communication and leadership skills. Most importantly, I learned how to interact with the client and manage expectations.

The Young Consultant is the UK branch of “De Kleine Consultant” in the Netherlands, which is a student-led non-profit consulting organisation. As a consultant I worked together in a small team of international students to help small companies and charities with strategic challenges. During my time as a consultant I worked on two completely different projects, one for a healthcare startup and one for a large charity. Through this experience, I developed several skills such as project scoping and slide writing and improved my team-working and presentation skills.

As part of the NAHSS program, I worked on a project for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. As an interdisciplinary group of students, we explored the potential application of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in the Netherlands, and investigated the modes of mobility in Beijing for comparison.

The NAHSS is an extracurricular summer program aimed at bachelor students interested in Asia. The program consisted of preparatory lectures and events, a consultancy project with a Dutch organisation, a 6-week summer school in China and several company visits.

This programme consists of four long weekends at IDEA League partner universities (RWTH Aachen, Politecnico di Milano, Chalmers University, ETH Zurich). The goal of these weekends is to solve real-world problems at the intersection of technology and society. The group was made up out of thirty students from the five partner universities. Skills like working in international groups, dealing with limited information, working under time pressure, and cooperation could be developed.

In my PhD project I study the stability of biopharmaceuticals (e.g. monoclonal antibodies) under various stress conditions relevant to bioprocessing using FTIR spectroscopy & spectroscopic imaging. I am funded through the Marit Mohn Scholarship, covering tuition fees and yearly stipend, which is awarded to one outstanding woman in (Bio)Chemical Engineering. Oral presentations during my PhD: • TAC-MI 2024 – International Forum (Best Presentation Award) - Tokyo, Japan • SciX 2024 – Innovations in Vibrational Spectroscopy for Pharmaceutical Development - Raleigh, NC, USA • Spring SciX 2024 – IRDG Martin & Willis Prize Meeting - Glasgow, UK • SciX 2023 – Vibrational Spectroscopy to Support Pharmaceutical Manufacturing - Reno, NV, USA • TAC-MI 2022 – International Forum - Tokyo, Japan Lastly, I was invited to the Toyota Konpon Research Institute in Japan to join several workshops on the future of scientific research (www.imperial.ac.uk/news/262035/realising-vision-positive-future/)

This one year MSc degree focused on understanding and designing bioprocesses for the production of biopharmaceuticals. The course consisted of several engineering modules, such as Bioreactor Engineering and Downstream Process Engineering, as well as modules on Validation & Quality Control, and Commercialisation of Research Ideas. The degree was concluded with a group design project, which aimed at teaching students how to design the bioprocess for a new biopharmaceutical, including the upstream and downstream design, mass balances, time planning, safety & quality assessments and economic analysis.

As part of the summer school at PKU I followed courses in Chinese Poetry and Chinese Traditional Identity.

Joint degree between Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam. The Nanobiology Bachelor’s degree programme teaches the fundamental knowledge and skills needed to describe and study the complexity of living systems. Core courses include: (Bio)Physics; Mathematics; Molecular Biology; Chemistry; Microscopy & Imaging; Bioinformatics; In the last semester of the programme an individual research project is conducted. In my project I studied the hydrolysis reaction of ATP in bacterial ATP synthases using Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC).

An interdisciplinary programme comprising courses, journal clubs, seminars and projects on top of the BSc Nanobiology curriculum. I followed courses in Biotechnology and Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Applied Sciences and participated in an interdisciplinary module called Leadership in a Complex World. Furthermore I attended journal clubs, discussing scientific papers about recent developments in the field of bionanoscience, and seminars, introducing me to researchers from different universities around the world. Finally, together with another student, I organized a series of nanobiology related lessons for elementary school students.

Exchange semester at the School of Life Sciences, EPFL in Switzerland. Courses: Immunology; Introduction to Chemical Engineering; Microbiology; Pharmaceutical Biotechnolgy; French Integrated Skills Module. In addition, I conducted an individual research project in the Laboratory of Microbiology and Microtechnology studying the cell wall of Mycobacterium smegmatis during cell growth.