Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering: Sustainable Urban Bioscience Engineering

The Master’s programme will qualify you to become a bioscience engineer who can provide (eco)technological and sustainable solutions to these various societally relevant challenges. The programme will provide you with in-depth knowledge of urban environmental challenges from different disciplines and of the right tools to address them. Key in the Master’s programme are the multidisciplinary CityLabs in the first year of the curriculum. Each CityLab is coordinated by a different university and focusses on a particular urban environmental challenge.

The Master Sustainable Urban Bioscience Engineering (SUBE) curriculum is designed to guide you step by step through two years of learning and discovery.

In the first year, you’ll start with a set of introductory courses that build a solid foundation for what comes next. You’ll explore what cities are, how they came to be, and what makes them sustainable — or not. You’ll learn to use tools for spatial and sustainability analysis, and you’ll see how disciplines such as sociology, urban planning, legislation, and economics play a vital role in urban projects.

Then comes the heart of the programme: the three multidisciplinary CityLabs, each on a different dimension of urban sustainability:

• The first, The Urban Ecosystem, coordinated by the University of Antwerp, looks at how cities interact with natural systems — water, air, soil, and urban green spaces.
• The second, Urban Resources, led by Ghent University, explores how to optimise the use of materials, water, energy, and food within urban environments.
• And the third, Human Health and Urban Liveability, coordinated by KU Leuven, examines how city life affects public health and overall quality of life. In every CityLab, you’ll work on real-life cases together with city services, companies, and community organisations. It’s hands-on, problem-based learning that connects bioscience engineering with many other disciplines to tackle complex, real-world sustainability challenges.

In your second year, you’ll have the freedom to personalise your learning path with advanced electives and free-choice courses. You’ll also gain valuable professional experience through a mandatory internship. Finally, you’ll complete your Master’s thesis — an individual, multidisciplinary research project that brings together everything you’ve learned and allows you to make your own contribution to the sustainable cities of tomorrow.

During the Master’s programme, you will interact with different types of stakeholders that are active in a city, both locally and globally (citizens, policy makers, businesses, organisations and many more).

The Master’s programme prepares you for a global employability in a broad international professional field. You will find employment with a wide variety of employers, both with those already providing sustainable and (eco)technological solutions to urban environmental challenges and with those still lacking a sustainable approach: in the public sector at local, national or supranational level (e.g. ministries of environment or European institutions), in international organisations, in academic or research institutions (e.g. universities or research institutes), in non-governmental organisations, and in private companies (e.g. environmental sector, food industry or engineering firms).

Particularly relevant is that this Master’s programme is jointly organised by the University of Antwerp (coordinator), Ghent University and KU Leuven, which is unique in Belgium and will result in a jointly awarded degree.