For the first time, international researchers have mapped the network of bacteria on coral reefs. They write about it in Nature Communications (9 April). Professor by special appointment Nicole de Voogd (Naturalis Biodiversity Center & Institute of Environmental Sciences) and two of her PhD students…

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that is offered free of charge to anyone interested.

Exploitation of smaller game is rarely documented before the latest phases of the Pleistocene, which is often taken to imply narrow diets for earlier hominins. In a study now published in Scientific Reports, a team of German and Dutch archaeologists present new data that contradict this view of Lower…

From treatment plants to hot showers, emissions from water use in the U.S. are equal to 50 million cars driving around for a year. In The Washington Post, staff writer Tik Root consults different experts to learn about ways to reduce our water consumption. He also speaks with Leiden environmental scientist…

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of the new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that begins on September 19.

The decision by the court in preliminary relief proceedings to immediately lift the curfew in the Netherlands – following a case brought by pressure group Viruswaarheid (Virus Truth) – has been overturned until the appeal on the case is heard this Friday. The government is doing everything in its power…

A better environment starts at the Living Lab. Leiden Scientists investigate the effect of chemical compounds on biodiversity in 38 natural ditches. The official opening took place on 8 June.

What are the implications for life on Earth of the declining numbers of insects? How does the ever increasing stream of of energy and material flowing through our cities impact the global environmental ? Find out the answers to these and more questions on sustainability in the new monthly lecture series…

Prof.dr. Annelou van Gijn has obtained a Marie Curie subsidy for research on wetland activity patterns in Mesolithic Northwest Europe. This funding has been used to employ the researcher dr. Aimée Little. The project will commence in November 2011.

William Pestle and Jason Laffoon recently published a new article entitled 'Quantitative paleodietary reconstruction with complex foodwebs: An isotopic case study from the Caribbean' in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The world is becoming clogged with plastic, with tiny plastic particles found everywhere, from the oceans’ depths to the mountain tops, soil, plants, animals and even inside us. The question is: what harm, if any, are they causing? In a new article on The Conversation, environmental scientists Meiru…

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

NWO has awarded a Vidi subsidy to a total of 89 young and innovative researchers. Leiden researchers have won twelve of these subsidies and three subsidies have gone to the LUMC. Each researcher will receive up to 800,000 euro to develop a particular research theme or to set up a research group.

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, equal opportunities for women worldwide, empowerment, and gender equality take centre stage. For years, the role of women in the past has been nearly invisible. Four archaeologists reflect on this inequality of focus, from hunter-gatherers in the palaeolithic to…

How to address loneliness during quarantine, keep healthcare workers healthy, and deal with social distancing in a person’s final hours? Before we can tackle such challenges, it is crucial to understand the perspective of those who suffer from them, say the teachers of a new Master Honours Class: “It…

Leiden University is a completely renovated historical building for teaching and research richer. The P.J. Veth building in the Nonnensteeg in Leiden was opened on 12 October by Martijn Ridderbos, Vice-President of the Executive Board.

A team of students from Leiden and Groningen took the second prize at the European final of the BISC-E sustainability competition. Last June, the team had already won the Dutch finals. The students came up with ‘Suckerspheres’, a natural alternative to the plastic micro-particles that are still frequently…

Innovation in nest building: bird nests made from anti-bird spikes. Researchers from Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the Natural History Museum Rotterdam describe this behaviour in a publication.

Netherlands and China can learn from each other to handle household and livestock wastewater more sensibly. In the FOREWARD project, scientists from Leiden, Wageningen, and China are working together with local partners on feasible solutions that advance the environment, health, and economy.

Earlier this year, the public voted environmental scientist Paul Behrens Discoverer of the Year 2018. Behrens is an interdisciplinary scientist who wants to understand our impact on the planet. ‘Unfortunately, we are not doing enough. Huge changes are underway and we’re running out of time to avoid…

To facilitate the search for new antibiotics. That is the aim of Gilles van Wezel, professor molecular biotechnology at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). He wants to do this by looking at similarities in the DNA of antibiotic-producing bacteria. Van Wezel has been awarded an ERC Advanced grant…

Paco Barona Gomez is the newest associate professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). The Mexican researcher is fascinated by the evolution of natural products: compounds made by microbes, but also plants and animals. ‘It’s like we investigate chemical dark matter.’

A lot of municipalities work with a points system to encourage construction projects to take biodiversity and creating green areas into account. But this way of working also benefits local neighbourhoods and residents, master's student Marije Sesink discovered. She based her study on The Hague.

The Honours Class From Solar to Fuel with Bio consisted almost entirely of the workshop on Solar Biofuels from Micro-organisms that drew more than eighty specialist researchers to Leiden's Lorentz Centre in late March/early April. Students Erica Wenker (chemistry) and Jasper van Dobben de Bruijn (law)…

Less meat and dairy means more space for nature, leisure, climate, biodiversity, more justice, and it's good news for the economy. That's according to the thought experiment conducted by Strootman Landscape Architects and Leiden environmental scientists. They presented their findings on 11 April.

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

The European Research Council has awarded a Starting Grant to five early career scientists from Leiden University. They received funding up to 1.5 million euros to further expand on their research subject.

Two years ago, Amanda Henry joined the Faculty of Archaeology’s Archaeological Sciences department. She investigates diet and human evolution, with a specific focus on plant foods. ‘Most of the studies on the prehistoric diet focus on meat and hunting. This just didn’t make sense to me.’

Now that university buildings have closed, most staff members have started working from home. How are Faculty of Science colleagues faring in their new offices?

When do we define a piece of nature in the city as a park? And when is something a tree or shrub? It may seem obvious, but in scientific literature the definitions vary quite a bit. That makes comparisons difficult. Environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo looked at the differences and designed a general…

New housing in old labs and striking architecture for University buildings and high-tech companies, not to mention waterside parks. An exhibition in Oude UB shows the radical changes that are in store for the Leiden Bio Science Park over the coming years.

You pour a scoop of ditch water in the DNA scanner, and voilà: you know exactly which plants and animals the ditch accommodates. Well, it is not that simple yet, but according to PhD candidate Kevin Beentjes, we can already use DNA techniques to monitor the quality of freshwater. For his PhD research,…

That corn was highly important in the Maya culture is something that Genner Llanes Ortiz, himself a Maya from the Mexican province of Yucatan, has always known, right from his childhood. But just how important the role of corn is in the collective memory of his people, is one of the subjects of his…

Leiden chemists have proposed a new model for enzymatic reactions, in which the flexibility of the substrate is much more important than previously thought. Their results are paradigm-shifting and could have major implications for drug research and enzyme engineering. Publication in Angewandte Chemi…

Photosynthesis is the origin of life on earth, but it is a phenomenon that is still barely understood. Take, for example, the extremely efficient mechanism of electron transport. Leiden researchers demonstrate for the first time where one particular cause of this might be found.

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

Associate Professor Asghar Seyed Gohrab considers it his role to tell students about Iran, the country where he was born and raised. His research focuses on the connections between the present and the past on the basis of the ‘magical triangle’: Persian literature, politics and religion.

Cotton is the most widely used natural fibre for clothes. But how polluting are our jeans and shirts actually? Environmental scientist Laura Scherer coordinated an international research project on the impacts of cotton. ‘The purchases of consumers in Europe can contribute to water scarcity in China…

Descriptions of different languages help us understand what speakers of different languages share worldwide. At the same time, having descriptions of languages available can also change local education and open our eyes to cultural and linguistic diversity. But what if a language has not yet been (fully)…

Plants that grow in patterns of stripes on the edge of deserts, plankton that live on the sea bed or oscillate in the water, and melanomas that spread throughout the body. Mathematician Lotte Sewalt discovered the common elements in these three systems. PhD defence 8 September.

The Linked In profile of alumnus Arne Driessen describes him as a ‘serial entrepreneur’. After studying Japanese he ended up working for a translation agency, after which he founded his own online marketing company, which he later sold to enable him to do something different again: making offices more…

With a self-converted red camper van, biologists and twin brothers Kevin and Marvin Groen go on a nature adventure in Eastern Europe. Together, they search for wild animals, beautiful nature and places to sport. From a long search for a bear in the Slovakian wilderness to the discovery that pelicans…

Martina Vijver has been nominated as Teacher of the Year of the Faculty of Science. She gets this nomination for the course Ecotoxicology she taught in 2022. The 52 students who took the course were hugely enthusiastic, as can be read in their positive reviews. What is so great about this course then?…

Is Europe skilling for sustainable food?

Algae are not what immediately spring to mind when people think of threatened species. But even among algae there are species that have a difficult time, such as ‘Aegagropila linnaei’. In the magazine BioScience Christian Bödeker describes the worldwide decline of this species. He calls for the species…

Over 30 ambassadors strengthened their ties with researchers and university leaders in a recent visit to Leiden University. Cross-border collaboration (both literal and figurative) was the theme of presentations and a tour of the Hortus botanicus.

A huge shiny aluminium object stands in the middle of the Polderlab in Oud Ade. Are the researchers trying to make contact with extraterrestrial life? Certainly not; they are using the ’Moon landers’ to measure whether innovative forms of agriculture reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fleur van Duin works…

Light, open and green: a description that fits the new, renovated location of the Faculty of Humanities. The official opening of the Herta Mohr Building took place on 8 October, and it has many remarkable features: for example, recycled ‘mushroom columns’, a pedestrian bridge to the University Library…

The Leiden University Green Office is pleased to announce its Spring Poetry competition, on the theme: (Environmental) Guilt!