Do you also love a city where nature can bloom, crawl and flutter freely and exuberantly? And do you fancy a challenge out in the fresh air? If so, grab your mobile and take part in the BioBlitz 'Higher Education is Flourishing' from 22 May.

Paul Behrens and his team have won the Frontiers Planet Prize of half a million euros for their research into the effects of switching to a plant-based diet.

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.

How do you progress from an immense gas cloud somewhere in the universe to a star with planets? Research by Astronomy PhD student Martijn van Gelder sheds more light on the earliest phases of this process. He will receive his doctorate on November 24th.

How do galaxies form? That is what astronomer Mariska Kriek will be researching in the coming years. She received an NWO Vici grant of 1.5 million euros to study galaxies in the early universe. ‘This research uses new and unprecedented observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These allow…

Facility

Organisation

Small workshop

Simulations of galaxy formation provide much more information about galaxies than a telescope. Simulations have been improving significantly in recent years. Astronomer Evgenii Chaikin made such a significant contribution to this field that he graduated with honours on February 27th.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Northern-Netherlandish artists drew outdoors to train their hands and eyes, and to record landscapes and nature. In her inaugural lecture on 21 March 2022, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Professor by Special Appointment of Art on Paper and Parchment, draws our attention to a…

Facility, Organisation

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

An international team of scientists, including Xander Tielens of Leiden Observatory, has used space telescope Hubble and the ALMA observatory to show that UV radiation from massive stars can prevent planets from forming. The researchers publish their findings on 1 March in the journal Science.

Is polder rice a feasible circular alternative for cows on peatland? A pilot experiment started this week. On May 22nd, researchers from Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) planted roughly 3,000 rice plants on the Polderlab near Leiden. The researchers want to test rice as a…

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of on average 1.5m euros enables researchers who show potential to start their own project, lead a research team and implement their best ideas.

Arts and culture, Stekjesmarkt

Arts and culture, Stekjesmarkt

2,240 plant extracts from 1,299 different plant species of Dutch origin. That’s the collection of the Dutch Extract Library, which has recently been transferred to the Institute of Biology Leiden. To plant biologist and contact person for this library Pingtao Ding this is a true treasury. ‘To bring…

PhD defence

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Nienke van der Marel has been awarded the New Horizons Prize in physics for her pioneering research on planet formation. This prize is given to young, promising researchers in physics or mathematics. The astronomer and her colleagues found the first observational evidence for 'dust traps' in disks around…

The jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) is flowering at the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. The plant started producing multiple flower clusters three weeks ago and the first ones are now in full bloom.

Arts and culture, Stekjesmarkt

Arts and culture, Stekjesmarkt

Lecture + Q&A

"Climate citizenship” explores how adapting environments to climate change can change the way people interact with each other and with government. It focuses on nature-based or 'green' climate infrastructure projects that make use of natural entities or dynamics. With an ERC grant, anthropologist Andrew…

The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) has appointed Jos Raaijmakers, professor of Microbial Interactions and diversity, as a new scientific member.

Organisation

Whether a microbe is beneficial or harmful to a plant can now be predicted with high accuracy thanks to bacLIFE. This bioinformatic tool with an intuitive interface makes it much easier to unlock the secrets of bacterial genomes. A group of Leiden biologists presented it in Nature Communications.

Lecture, Research Seminar

PhD defence

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of researchers, including Leiden Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck, has discovered a palette of hydrocarbons in a planet-forming disc around a young, low-mass star. The results confirm that discs around very lightweight…

Graig Klein, assistant professor at the Institute of Security of Global Affairs (ISGA), has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) for his project TERGAP. With this 1.500.000 euro grant Klein and his research team will investigate terrorist groups’ decision-making and strategic…

Botanisch filosoof Norbert Peeters vertelt over hoe mensen omgaan met planten in het algemeen, en met onkruid in het bijzonder.