diff --git a/webapp/web/js/vitroUtils.js b/webapp/web/js/vitroUtils.js
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..164a0a975
--- /dev/null
+++ b/webapp/web/js/vitroUtils.js
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+/* $This file is distributed under the terms of the license in /doc/license.txt$ */
+
+$(document).ready(function(){
+
+    // fade out welcome-message when user logs in
+    $('section#welcome-message').css('display', 'block').delay(2000).fadeOut(1500);
+    
+});
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/webapp/web/templates/freemarker/page/partials/headScripts.ftl b/webapp/web/templates/freemarker/page/partials/headScripts.ftl
index 92e6d171c..d995c593f 100644
--- a/webapp/web/templates/freemarker/page/partials/headScripts.ftl
+++ b/webapp/web/templates/freemarker/page/partials/headScripts.ftl
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 <!-- script for enabling new HTML5 semantic markup in IE browsers-->
 <script type="text/javascript" src="${urls.base}/js/html5.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="${urls.base}/js/jquery.js"></script>
+<script type="text/javascript" src="${urls.base}/js/vitroUtils.js"></script>
 
 ${headScripts.tags}