Student Projects

Our laboratory offers projects for master students. Depending on the student’s interest and background, projects will be designed together with the head of the laboratory and/or supervisor of the project. The research will focus on identifying the molecular mechanisms by which metabolites coordinate processes in metabolism, immune function and cancer.

  •    Current Master’s Project: Full time (42 hours/week) – Identification of antagonists of nuclear receptors.

The full-time master’s project will be a guided research program within the Schoonjans lab in collaboration with a biotech company. The master student will be exposed to wetlab biology techniques/practices (e.g. RNA/protein extraction, qPCR) and computational techniques. The goal of the project will be to identify molecules that act as antagonist of nuclear receptors with effects on intermediary metabolism and cancer. This project will be in collaboration with a biotech company that has extensive expertise in virtual screening of libraries, α-screens and SAR (Structure-Activity Relation) studies. The student will work under the guidance of a post-doctoral fellow in the lab.