Leiden University organizes a course on quantum mechanics for high school Physics teachers. As the curriculum gains a new quantum component, the university enables teachers to give the best possible guidance to their students.

Lecture

The Dutch Research School for Theoretical Physics (DRSTP) has received excellent ratings from an independent international committee. The DRSTP is a school for PhD training which has grown out of a collaboration between the theoretical physics departments at six Dutch universities—including Leiden—and…

Uncertainty and noise are frequently-encountered obstacles in real-world applications of numerical optimization. The practice of optimization that deals with uncertainties and noise is commonly referred to as robust optimization.

Assistant Professor Vedran Dunjko and his team received a gift from Google to support their quantum research. The research focuses on whether quantum computers can provide new ways of understanding the mysteries of high-energy physics.

Josien de Klerk and Tennessee Miller examined the interplay between students’ illness and recovery experiences and academic work culture in this context.

Optimization tasks in practice have multifaceted challenges as they are often black box, subject to multiple equality and inequality constraints and expensive to evaluate.

Governance and Global Affairs, Institute of Public Administration

This article explores crisis communication research clusters in the literature, examining overlaps and intersections among diverse fields.

On Wednesday November 28th, the Physics education program organized its second Bachelor Project fair.

The progressive loss and degeneration of dopaminergic neurons is a major pathological hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). The onset and progression of PD can be triggered by multiple risk factors, for instance, genetic mutation, environmental exposure, and aging.

On Wednesday December 13, the Physics institute hosts its first Bachelor Project fair. Principal Investigators of many research groups at LION give poster presentations on the opportunities they have in store for students who will soon start their Bachelor project.

From July 22nd to August 1st, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

On Tuesday September 11th, the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) organizes the third edition of its annual Science Day. Scientists from disciplines all across the physics spectrum will elaborate on their research during seventeen interactive talks. LION organizes the event to showcase the full range…

The winning picture by Sander Blok in the annual Physics Image Award has made it to Leidsch Dagblad. The runner-up image by Jelmer Wagenaar has been selected as Beeld van de Week in De Volkskrant.

New: Een Podcast over Natuurkunde, a podcast about Leiden physics. In the first episode, Dirk van Delft tells about the Hendrik Antoon Lorentz biography that he wrote with Frits Berends.

Finally, it's high time for the yearly LION Image award. Send us your most impressive, beautiful or insightful physics image, and win eternal fame on top of 100 euros, and a year long exhibition on the LION picture wall.

The Leiden physics institute LION has bought a painting by the American physicist Gregory Horndeski, who wrote a brilliant article about gravity in 1974. After being ignored for 35 years, Horndeski's paper became a huge hit among cosmologists, unbeknownst to Horndeski himself, who had made a career…

Swarms of drones, pedestrians or the cells in your body. Those are all examples of active matter: materials whose building blocks can move autonomously. That’s what Luca Giomi studies. Giomi has been appointed Professor of theoretical physics in the area of soft matter and biological physics at the…

Climate change is a challenge for both current and future generations. New biological resources have to be developed in order to meet the demand for energy as well as the demand for food.

In this article Vanessa Newby discusses how the ANZUS states of United States, Australia, and New Zealand that sit on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific, are increasingly using their armed forces to deliver Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response (HADR) as a way of engaging with the region.

Professor Renata Kallosh (Stanford University), one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, will be this summer’s Lorentz Professor at the Leiden institute for theoretical physics. Her main areas of interest are cosmology and string theory. She studied physics in Moscow, where she also obtained…

Beenakker

Salt crystals, a nano-sized golf stick and molten glass. The LION Image Award competition of 2023 yielded a lot of beautiful images once again. But in the end, only one can be the winner.

On the evening of Tuesday January 31st, the physics institute organizes its triannual meeting for over seventy high school teachers. The program consists of lectures on developments in modern physics and the latest initiatives in the world of education.

Leiden Physics Poster

In the latest episode of DWDD University on 'Light', Prof. Robbert Dijkgraaf used a number of experiments from the Leiden Physics Practicum Lab. He showed why the sky is blue, that light is a wave phenomenon, how magnetism and electricity are connected and that white light consists of all colors of…

Experimental physicist Tjerk Oosterkamp and theoretician Hans van Leeuwen conduct research on the exact mechanism behind ice skating. De Volkskrant published a news item about it during the opening weekend of the Olympics.

For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, women students and researchers from physics talk about what inspires them about their work. From quantum to cosmology and biophysics, their curiosity about how nature works is what connects these women. What do these 5 scientists want to share…

On April 20, sixty participants will take part in LION’s triannual meeting for high school physics teachers, to deepen their knowledge of physics and astronomy and to explore new teaching methods. This edition marks a special occasion, as it is the last meeting organized by Bert van der Hoorn, who will…

NWO has granted Jan Aarts en Vadim Cheianov a Physics Projectruimte, a granting instrument for small-scale projects that propose innovative fundamental physics research that has a scientific, industrial or social urgency.

Dear student, Join the Career Information Meeting Astronomy & Physics (CIMAP) and launch your career! The meeting is set up especially for Astronomy and Physics master’s and 3rd year bachelor’s students and takes place on Monday October 9th from 15:30 - 17:30 hrs in room HL414.

There are miniaturisation beams, microrobots, and ice skaters who suddenly drop into a hole in the ice. Students of the local MBO Rijnland let their imagination run free while animating Leiden physics research. The result is eleven surprising and very diverse science animations.

A new discovery proves that it matters which approach researchers take in analyzing large physical, social or biological systems that have a networked structure. Ever since the early 1900s, scientists have assumed each approach is equivalent. Now many results in statistical physics may no longer hold.…

Daniela Kraft and her research are a familiar fixture at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). Both have been awarded fellowships, grants and frequent media coverage. Effective July 1, Kraft has been appointed professor of Experimental physics, particularly in soft and biological matter.

After a succesful first lecture, the Leiden physics institute LION is launching an online series of (Dutch language) lectures about physics, intended for a broad audience, named the Tatiana Afanassjewa lectures. Upcoming speakers are science historian Dirk van Delft, neutrino physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

The particle accelerator of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, produces large amounts of complex data with high accuracy, as a result of which theoretical predictions also need to be more accurate and faster. With his research team, PhD candidate Ben Ruijl developed very innovative…

The Leiden Institute of Physics hosted the annual conference of the Dutch Vacuum Society (NEVAC). Experts in the field of vacuum experiments talked about their research. The 2016 NEVAC Prize was awarded to PhD student Martijn Vos from the TU Eindhoven.

String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported this week in 'Science'.

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.

This summer, the Casimir Research School celebrates its first lustrum. To mark the occasion and to commemorate the fact that Hendrik Casimir would be 100 this summer, his widow Josina Casimir-Jonker has endowed the Research School with a fund to support the activities of master's students.

This year, two Leiden physicists have earned a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. With a budget of 1.5 million euros, this is one of the largest individual grants for scientists.

Make more fluid: In condensed matter systems, electrons can acquire unusual properties from their interaction with the atomic lattice.

This PhD-thesis presents a study on micron-sized particles, so-called colloids. By controlling the chemical and physical properties of these particles, such as the interparticle interaction and the particles’ shape, colloids can act as building blocks that self-assembly into larger structures.

As of 1 June, Leiden University has appointed Sense Jan van der Molen as Professor Physics of Condensed matter. He investigates the unique electronic properties that arise when atomic thin layers are stacked on top of each other into new materials.