Ten scientists from Leiden University will receive a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. This will allow them to launch their own project, form their own research team and implement their best ideas.

The Open University and Leiden University will join forces to offer a (Dutch-taught) Joint Legal Technologies Program for professionals. In doing so, they can provide the advanced legal informatics training that is necessary in our rapidly digitising society. The joint program is a further development…

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be useful allies in the fight against critical environmental problems. Could because the use of GMOs is strictly regulated at the moment. A Leiden student team is now trying to make these GMOs safer with the aid of an ingenious lock.

The life of a fibroblast is heavy, but PhD student Julia Eckert makes it 19.5 times heavier, using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at the ESTEC space research centre in Noordwijk.

Within the same species of butterfly many different wing patterns can occur. How is this possible? According to researchers Ben Wielstra and Emma Berdan, of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the answer lies within supergenes. A supergene is a part of a chromosome that contains many strongly linked…

One of the ambitions of the Learning@LeidenUniversity vision on teaching and learning is to foster an international and inclusive educational community in which everyone feels welcome, regardless of religion, sex, sexual orientation or cultural background. One student service that promotes inclusion…

PhD Research Projects:

Embryonic stem cells have the remarkable ability to develop into any type of cell. On their way to become for example a liver or a heart cell, they must repeatedly decide between alternative developmental paths. How they make these decisions is largely unknown. An international team of biophysicists…

Leiden University is working on sustainability and should give its efforts more publicity. This is the conclusion of Industrial Ecology master’s students who investigated the extent to which Leiden University is green and sustainable.

Four Master's students Science Communication & Society made two podcasts on the theme Plastic for the end project of their study programme. With the podcasts, they helped the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) to draw attention to plastic pollution. And that was harder than it seemed. 'Be sure to test…

In recent years, the question why citizens (do not) support democratic innovations has attracted increasing academic attention. In this research note, Van Der Does & Kantorowicz for the first time empirically verify what drives citizens’ instrumental considerations in their evaluation of a DI.

Conference, INVISIHIST Conference

Due to technological and societal developments, we are being flooded with more information than our brains can process. How does this affect our decision-making, both as individuals and as a society? And can we learn to make better choices? This is what Lotte van Dillen will explore with her profess…

Nadine Raaphorst, university lecturer at the Institute of Public Administration, has been awarded a Veni-subisidy from science financier NWO. This grant of up to 250,000 euros will enable her to set up her own research in the coming years. Raaphorst's research is about consistent decision-making by…

The youngest institute of the Faculty of Science has had a real growth spurt in recent years. It is up to Martina Vijver as the brand-new scientific director to secure that growth and further develop CML. 'This is a challenge that I am really looking forward too,' says Vijver. 'Together with my colleagues…

The availability of natural resources, the energy transition, the importance of circularity and our dependence on China. This and more is what Professor of Industrial Ecology René Kleijn's inaugural lecture is about.

Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden University and Philips are jointly receiving over 2 million euros from NWO to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) lab. The aim of this lab is to accelerate and improve MRI scans with AI. This is great for patients, and it helps make MRI more accessi…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 goes to David Thouless, Michael Kosterlitz and Duncan Haldane for theoretical discoveries in the field of topological materials. Haldane spent part of 2008 in Leiden; he is the 14th Lorentz Professor to win a Nobel Prize.

The Sanquin blood bank gathers data on every donation. Around 720,000 donations are made every year. ‘That generates a mountain of highly valuable data,’ says Leiden PhD candidate Marieke Vinkenoog.

As a result of globalisation, migration and technological advances, politicians have to make complex choices about social security and labour market policy. Professor by special appointment Olaf van Vliet will speak about this topic in his inaugural lecture on 7 June.

The research contained in this dissertation explores the origins of fire making in prehistory, focusing primarily on the fire use practices and fire production capacities of Neandertals.

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

It may well be the best tradition in Leiden: immortalising your name in the ‘Sweat Room’ after receiving your diploma. But is it really immortalised? The names were at risk due to crumbling plaster. Fortunately, a crowdfunding project was able to save this beloved ritual.

On January 5, Rosa Winter will obtain her doctorate in arithmetic geometry. She researched solutions of equations that define so-called ‘del Pezzo surfaces’. ‘I like geometry because I can imagine and draw the shapes and objects,’ says Winter. ‘That makes abstract mathematics feel more tangible.’

From a Tuscany escape room to scientific illustrations of flowers, and from Chinese movie subtitles to innovative education methods for children, every subject imaginable was covered at the first ever Honours College Conference. ‘You get the chance to break away from the standard study path.’

Conducting research for the municipality: this is a deliberate choice for the master’s students who are taking part in the Resilient Cities Hub, part of Learning with the City. Nina Ruig and Marron Loods are two such students. They are researching sustainability issues for the Municipality of Leiden…

Students taking the new bachelor’s course ‘Social Movements and Political Violence’ are about to do something new. In addition to studying textbooks and academic articles, they will actively work with multimedia materials and engage in online storytelling. Course instructor Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden…

Over 300 people from 38 different countries took part in the online lecture

Master’s students in Industrial Ecology and Governance of Sustainability have helped answer organisations’ questions about sustainability

A festive and honourable visit to our southern neighbours for professor Marc Koper. On Thursday 23 March, he received an honorary doctorate at the University of Antwerp. Koper gets the title in recognition of his expertise in the field of electrochemistry. ‘An important recognition for our research…

Tjerk Oosterkamp's group is conducting what is perhaps the coldest research in the world. The researchers have cooled a sensor to below 2 millikelvin - almost as cold as absolute zero. This allows them to make extremely sensitive measurements. PhD candidate Jaimy Plugge helped build the setup: ‘We are…

Hans Slabbekoorn researches animal sounds and the effect of the noise we humans make on these animals. He is also committed to making his discipline more diverse.

A discovery made in Leiden helps not only to make natural gas from CO2 but also to store renewable energy. Research by Professor Marc Koper and PhD student Jing Shen shows how this process can be implemented in a cost-effective and controllable way. Nature Communications, 2 september 2015.

The quality of vaccines is still often tested by using laboratory animals. That has to change, according to researchers from Leiden University and the vaccinological institute Intravacc. Together they went searching for a test method that makes animal testing unnecessary. The first promising results…

A chair tipping over serves as a metaphor for a migraine attack in Thijs Perenboom’s PhD research at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). He wants to unravel whether and how we can predict migraine attacks. He will defend his thesis on Tuesday 21 June.

Martin van Hecke and Lennard Kwakernaak (Leiden university and AMOLF) develop a mechanical metamterial that can count to ten in their research.

Five Leiden researchers have been nominated as members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).They will be inaugurated on 16 September.

An event where students came together to discuss the impact of AI on healthcare. Jurren de Groot and Yuxuan Zhu, master's students in Artificial Intelligence, took up the debate. They participated in SimuVaction, an event that brings students worldwide together in Atlanta to simulate an initiative of…

Gelderland Heritage and Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology have won the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award 2022 in the ‘research’ category with the Heritage Quest citizen science project. ‘Heritage Quest has shown that citizens can play an active role in protecting cultural heritage…

On 1 May, Casper de Jonge will be appointed Professor of Greek Language and Literature. ‘Greek literature did not come from Athens alone: authors from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor also wrote in Greek.’

Physicists, including Dorothea Samtleben from Leiden University, are building a giant underwater telescope to unravel the origin of neutrinos and to solve the mystery surrounding dark matter. The first detector has now been installed. Once it is finished, the telescope will be three cubic kilometres…

On a wintry Wednesday evening, big issues were the topic of conversation at Grand Café de Burcht. Young Academy Leiden (YAL) was holding a round table: Next444. Now the 444th anniversary of Leiden University is over, it’s time to look once again to the future. What issues will we be facing over the…

Computer scientist Tim Coopmans uses pen, paper and regular computers to simulate the best possible quantum computer. He tells about his research and how this helps make a useful quantum computer a reality a little bit sooner. ‘I hope I will get to see quantum computers contributing something really…

PhD candidate Jiangnan Ding explores how you can design a thick slab of rubber in a way that it might act as a mechanical computer bit. This so-called mechanical metamaterial is pushed in a specific way to change its shape. ‘With a very simple material, we might be able to do simple calculations in…

Histories, Philosophies, and Communities

Leiden University has almost sixty talented students who are studying at the Royal Conservatory in parallel with their degree programme. They will be demonstrating their talents in a series of nine public concerts.

In some university restaurants and cafés, you can already order them and, come January, you can enjoy them everywhere: the Pure products. Sustainable, healthy and/or vegetarian. The beautiful lime green, also the colour of the plates and bowls, is the vibrant symbol of these products. And Pure is even…

As a humanities researcher, it is not always easy to explain to other people why what you do is important. It is easy for people to see why searching a cure for cancer matters, but it is a bit harder to make clear why it is also important to study language, culture, and history. One of the things that…