The catalogue is not a set of pre-written assignments. Each challenge offers a problem context, a commissioner who acts as a thinking partner rather than a client, and access to data, reports and expert networks; the research question, sub-questions and methodology are formulated by the student. The approach is transdisciplinary by design: it places STR students inside live research rather than alongside it, working on questions the field has not yet answered.
The thirteen challenges span the energy transition, circular economy, climate adaptation and urban biodiversity, and are anchored in funded programmes including FlexPower (4TU.Energy), BatteryNL (NWA-ORC), Re-Sail, Circular Shift (NWO/KIEM), Thirsty Cities (NWO), Neighbourhood as a Biotope (Regieorgaan SIA), EXTRA (NWO), RAAIT (Regieorgaan SIA/SPRONG), Reparatiefabriek (Province of South Holland) and the multi-institution Circular Frontrunners in Focus study.
Commissioners and research partners include professors from Hogeschool Rotterdam’s Centre of Expertise HRTech and Knowledge Centre Business Innovation, alongside external organisations such as Port of Rotterdam Authority and the City of Rotterdam. This year’s challenges are commissioned by Gijsbert Korevaar, Thierry Verduijn, Deborah Tappi, Ted Veldkamp, Anja Overdiek, Marcel den Hollander, Mirella Soyer, Josanne Heeroma-ten Katen, and Ana Florencia Martinez, from the STR programme.
“This catalogue is what it looks like when we stop treating education and research as two separate tracks. Every one of these thirteen challenges puts a Master’s student’s thesis inside a question our own professors are still working on: not a case study, but a live one,” says Ana Florencia Martinez, Research Lecturer, Master Sustainability Transitions.
“This is genuinely new for how we teach: our Master’s students don’t write about a research question from the outside, they work inside one, alongside the same professors and research centres actually running it. That’s a different way of preparing people for applied research careers, and it raises the bar on what we expect our students to deliver,” says Hervé Brisson, Director, RBS Master’s Programmes.
The catalogue reflects challenges confirmed as of 30 August 2026; a small number of additional challenges are being finalised.
For RBS, the catalogue is also a statement about how education and research relate at Hogeschool Rotterdam: rather than research centres producing findings that later filter into teaching, STR students are placed inside open, unanswered questions from the start, working alongside the same professors driving the underlying funded projects, across research groups that don’t typically share a curriculum.
This is genuinely new for us as a way of working together, and we’re excited to learn as we go. We’ll share how it unfolds, and how we end up spreading the word about what we discover along the way.