There is an urgent need for more physiologically relevant cell culture methods to guide compound selection in pre-clinical stages of the drug development pipeline.

How can novel bioimaging technologies and vertebrate model species be used to gain a better understanding of early cellular behaviours with the ultimate goal to increase our understanding of human development and disease processes?

The research in this thesis is focused on tomographic reconstruction based on two imaging modalities in electron microscopy.

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.W.M. Frenken

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

This thesis focuses on using liposomes in two different treatment strategies; vaccination (or immunotherapy) and delivery of a small molecule, and in two different disease models; cancer and atherosclerosis.

Physicist Daniël Geelen has developed a new microscope that uses low-energy electrons. Those are less harmful to biological and organic materials. Geelen defends his PhD thesis on May 31st.

Research groups in the Biological & Soft Matter Programme unravel mechanisms in biological processes and develop novel bio-inspired soft materials.

There are several training oportunities within the cell observatory

The CMCB brings together a diverse range of unique expertise in microbial cell biology. Members of the CMCB investigate both model and non-model organisms, bacteria and archaea, pathogens and non-pathogens.

The CIGR brings together a diverse range of unique expertise in genome research rooted in biology, chemistry and physics. Members of the CIGR investigate genome folding and genome transactions. An important aspect is direct as well as long term relevance for medicine. The available expertise extends…

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-promotor: T. Grüne

This thesis describes a study from both a theoreticaL and an experimental point of view.

NL-BioImaging AM is a distributed research infrastructure aimed at promoting progress in the most cutting edge microscopy technologies and providing open access to these technologies to a broad community of academic and industrial users. All Netherlands bio(medical) microscopy centers participate.

Promotor: J.W.M. Frenken

PhD defence

Core Facilities are shared resources that provide access to instruments, technologies and services to researchers across the Institute of Biology. They are staffed by scientists with vast experience in their field, ensuring that all researchers can count not only on the latest available technology…

The work in this thesis demonstrates how to obtain an atomic-scale picture of a diverse set of complex surface structures observed using STM, under disparate conditions.

In this Ph.D. thesis we study the interaction of low energy electrons with thin materials, namely layered materials (graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide) and organic films. At these low energies the quantum mechanical wavelength of the electron wave function is in the order of a…

On this page you can find the current vacancies at the Van der Molen research group.

In most applications, electrocatalysts exhibit a large surface area to volume ratio, for example using nanoparticles.

Our research in the area of safety sciences aims to increase the mechanistic understanding of cellular toxicity of drugs and, in a broader sense, chemicals.

Lecture

By detecting the tiny forces between a micrometer sized magnet and the spins of hydrogen nuclei, we can do MRI with a volume resolution that is approximately 12 orders of magnitude better than a conventional MRI.  

In this thesis, time-lapse fluorescent microscopy plays a pivotal role in investigating functional materials within living cells as well as the migratory behaviour of neural progenitor cells.

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful technique used to visualize the inside of cells and to study specific protein complexes. Within this thesis, I describe the use of various cryo-EM techniques to gain insight into the structural changes of the human pathogen, Vibrio cholerae, as it…

STM scanning experiments on poorly conducting materials are challenging, and can cause a distortion effect. A new model corrects for this effect, allowing physicists to better study materials in their quest to understand unconventional superconductivity. Publication in Physical Review B as Editor’s…

PhD defence

Hydrogen fuel cells are expected to be pivotal in the energetic transition towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. However, their industrial scalability is severely hindered by the high cost and degradation rate of platinum catalysts, one of their key components. Addressing this…

The nanoscale structure of a catalyst under reaction conditions determines its activity, selectivity, and stability. For the production of sustainable energy and materials, new catalysts are needed. By understanding the structure-activity relationships of catalysts under reaction conditions, insight…

The logo of Leiden University, with letters as small as a bacterium. Researchers from LUMC and the Institute of Biology have created the smallest logo of our university ever produced. It is a piece of fun with a serious real-world application: the new microscope with which the logo was made allows scientists…

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

The Department of Biophysical Structural Chemistry studies how biological systems work at the molecular level through high-resolution structural analysis. Using state-of-the-art techniques in structural biology such as cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography we gain crucial insights into…

Detecting nanoscopic objects plays an important role in nanoscience in particular, in the rapidly growing field of nanobiology. The forebear to modern super-resolution microscopy for single molecule investigation, is fluorescence microscopy.

For each living organism health is ensured by correct functioning of its cells. Cells therefore have elaborate methods for regulation of their proteins.

In our lab, we investigate the physics and material properties of low-dimensional systems.

The use of a new type of detector has generated a strong improvement in the resolution of electron microscopes. The 'low-energy electron microscope' (LEEM) can now be used for research on the thinnest possible materials. The tests with the detector represent the first result of the ESCHER project.

How can you use robots and automatic recognition of microscopic images to test the effect of drugs exceptionally quickly?

PURPOSE: In the present study we investigated the root-cause of an interference signal (100-200 nm) of sugar-containing solutions in dynamic light scattering (DLS) and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) and its consequences for the analysis of particles in biopharmaceutical drug products.

Archaeometric analysis of glazed pottery assemblages from the Early Byzantine to the Early Modern periods in the Aegean.

In this work, we investigate the minute circular dichroism effects of single nanoparticles.To this aim, we apply photothermal imaging with a polarization-modulated heating beam.

Our facilities cover:

Our Division has created and maintains the Visualisation Core Facilities of the LACDR. This is a multi-user facility offering basic and advanced microscopic techniques to scientists of the LACDR.

Tuberculosis causes 1.5 million deaths yearly and anti-tuberculosis therapies are threatened by emergence of drug resistance. Development of innovative drug combinations should be accelerated with the use of translational pharmacological models. Moreover, host-directed therapies (HDT), which stimulate…

The quantum nature of matter and light has grown into a broad and fruitful research field for theorists and experimentalists alike. It combines foundational research with toward applications, the most well known of which is the quantum computer.