Setting

The Green Student Lab is an independent initiative, collaborating with expert scientists from the Swammerdam Institute for life Sciences (SILS), operating within the Faculty of Science (FNWI) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Since September 2010, the UvA-FNWI is housed in a brand new building at the Science Park in Amsterdam, which made the Science Park one of the largest centers of academic research in the Netherlands. There are many green life sciences research groups in the UvA-FNWI plus the Free University and in 2012 they organized themselves into a faculty focal point: "Green Life Sciences".

Because the Green Student Lab is oriented at the world outside academia, there are several collaborations that guarantee a secure embedding in plant-based industry.

The Green Student Lab is an integral part of the “Green Life Sciences Hub (GLSH)”. This is an initiative of the UvA, Naktuinbouw and the “Kamer van Koophandel Amsterdam”, which has in 2012 been embraced as an iconic project by the Amsterdam Economic Board via the cluster “Flowers and Food”.
The GLSH aims to create an accessible and viable knowledge and technology infrastructure that will stimulate and facilitate innovation in plant-oriented companies in the Metropolitan Area Amsterdam.
The GLSH consists of several components:
- The Green Innovation Counter (de Groene Innovatietoonbank)
- The Green Applied Research & Technology Laboratory
- The Green Student Lab
- The Green e-infrastructure
- The Green Forensics Initiative
For all parts, funding has been acquired and they are in their first operational phase. There is a tight interaction between the GLSH and plant-oriented companies and branche organizations such Plantum NL, Seed Valley, and Blooming Breeders.

There is also a close collaboration with the “Virtual Lab for Plant Breeding (VLPB)”. This is an initiative of many plant-breeding companies and two universities to develop pre-competitive bioinformatics infrastructure for green life sciences R&D. The VLPB recently evolved from project consortium to an official association.