Eleven researchers at Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht have each been awarded a Vidi grant of up to €850,000 by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), which announced the results on 22 October 2026. A Vidi lets a researcher develop their own line of research over five years and build or expand a research group. Eight of the winners work at Utrecht University and three at UMC Utrecht, the city's university medical centre.

Nationally, NWO awarded 109 Vidi grants in this round. It received 712 pre-proposals and 265 full applications, so roughly 15 per cent of those who started the process were funded. Of the 109 grants, 64 went to women and 45 to men.

Utrecht University's own announcement speaks of twelve grants. Its list also includes Evelien Hoeben, whose project is described under the university's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. NWO's list of laureates names her institution as the NSCR, the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. This article follows NWO's count.

Health: asthma, cancer and stem cells

At the Faculty of Science, Olaf Perdijk will study how the gut microbiome and the lining of children's airways develop together in the first years of life. The university says microbe-derived molecules may shape immune responses in the airways, and that identifying them could lay the foundation for new ways to prevent allergic asthma, one of the most common chronic lung diseases in children.

At UMC Utrecht, Marta Cuenca-Lopera's project, SHIELD, starts from a hard figure: according to the project summary, one in ten patients receiving immunotherapy dies from a viral infection, because current treatments deplete immune cells that protect against viruses. She will work on therapies that fight cancer while keeping that protection in place. "Our goal is to develop effective cancer immunotherapies that enable patients to clear infections quickly," she says in the university's account.

Her colleague Joana Silva asks whether it matters where in a cell proteins are made. Ribosomes, the cell's protein factories, were long assumed to work the same wherever they sit, the university notes; Silva will investigate how cells detect ribosome problems and shift production, and whether that helps keep stem cells healthy.

Back at the Faculty of Science, Suzan Ruijtenberg will use advanced microscopes to watch individual proteins being made in living animals during embryonic development. "What I love most about research is making things visible that no one has ever seen before," she says.

At the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Daniel Hurdiss will study how coronaviruses use their spike protein to enter cells, combining computer modelling, structural biology and virology. "By understanding how coronaviruses invade cells, we hope to better assess which viruses jump from animals to humans," he says.

Technology, AI and the people who use it

Edwin van Dellen of UMC Utrecht starts from an observation in the university's summary: a growing number of people who hear voices talk to chatbots such as ChatGPT about their experiences, often in the evening or during a crisis, when professional help is unavailable. Whether that helps or harms is unknown. His team will analyse chat conversations that participants share voluntarily, alongside short daily smartphone questionnaires, and will develop guidance on safe use together with voice-hearers, their relatives and clinicians.

Xixi Lu, at the Faculty of Science, works on process mining: methods that reconstruct what actually happens in workflows such as handling loan applications or treating patients. As AI takes over some of those steps, she wants to detect early when procedures are no longer being followed. "The aim is to better monitor complex processes so that we can provide stronger assurances that important procedures are being followed, even when AI is used," Lu says.

At the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance, Catalina Goanta's MINICONSUMERS project argues that the debate about children online has been narrowed to a question of access, through social media bans and age checks. She will examine how EU consumer law could recognise children as active participants in the digital economy while still protecting them.

Cities, mountains and war

Dea van Lierop, at the Faculty of Geosciences, will study how people of all ages experience getting to work, school, the shops or healthcare, with particular attention to children and older adults. Her project, Accessing 0–100 Cities, uses surveys and interviews in three European cities to build a new way of measuring those differences. The university says the aim is to help governments and planners design transport that works for everyone; it does not say which cities will be studied.

Her faculty colleague Philip Kraaijenbrink looks further afield, at the high mountains of Asia, a water source for hundreds of millions of people. As snow and glaciers retreat, plants are spreading to higher elevations and releasing water into the air. "We still know surprisingly little about which elevation zones in the mountains really matter for downstream water supply," he says.

Katharine Fortin, also at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance, will examine when it is lawful under international law for civilians to resist during armed conflict, and what legal responsibilities states take on when they encourage or compel civilians to resist an invasion. The university says the work is meant to guide government lawyers, defence planners and humanitarian practitioners.

What it means for Utrecht

These are research grants, not services, and most results will take years to arrive. Descriptions of what each project may achieve come from the researchers and the university, not from an independent assessment. But the grants fund eleven research groups at the city's university and hospital for the next five years, in fields that range from children's lungs to how people get around the city. The Utrechter Post will report on findings as they are published.