A glittering visualisation of dark matter by Dutch artist Thijs Biersteker is on display in the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. The installation – ‘Dark Distortions’ – was inspired by Euclid, a forthcoming ESA mission to study the mysterious nature of dark matter. Leiden astronomer Henk Hoekstra…

Leiden Observatory is going to use a new technique to carry out calculations on gravitational lensing measurements. They will do this is the context of research into the formation of elliptical galaxies. Alessandro Sonnenfeld (University of Tokyo) who developed this technique joined the research team…

For their honours internship, second year students of the Honours College 'Governance & Global Affairs' created the serious game Fallen Angels. In the game you take on the role of NATO, and have to deal with a crisis. Last month, a new generation of Honours students had the opportunity to be the first…

Prof. Dr. Richard Gill has recently joined as a member of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). FQXi is an international association of scientists who explore the foundations of physics and cosmology.

Radio telescope LOFAR maps the sky. It produces incredibly detailed images of the universe - and vast amounts of data. Huub Röttgering, director of the Leiden Observatory, talks about the challenges of working with those enormous datasets.

Cosmologists can measure with increasing precision how the universe is expanding and changing. This is producing unexpected results and causing cracks in our picture of the universe. At the ESOF session The Dark Side of our Mysterious Universe, cosmologists, astronomers and philosophers will discuss…

Sonja Boas developed new techniques to study vascular growth computationally. The results of her research provide a better understanding into mechanisms behind vascular growth, which is relevant to the development of medical therapies. She defends her thesis 'Computational modeling of angiogenesis'…

The standard approach to build a quantum computer with Majoranas as building blocks is to convert them into qubits. However, a promising application of quantum computing—quantum chemistry—would require these qubits to be converted again into so-called fermions. Physicists from Leiden and Delft suggest…

In his dissertation Gabriel Paiuk explores the variable ways in which what is heard is formed. To address this, he postulates a novel concept of sound image in a post-anthropocentric context in which both mind and material artefacts are instances across which the image occurs, rather than hosts on which…

The Old Observatory has a rich history. On this page you will find a short version of the history that took place in the observatory.

Your tuition fee depends on a number of factors, such as your nationality and your previous Dutch higher-education qualifications.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Your tuition fee depends on a number of factors, such as your nationality and your previous Dutch higher-education qualifications.

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…

A Dutch collaboration, including the SURF Open Innovation Lab and Leiden Observatory, has won Hyperion Research's HPC Innovation Excellence Award. This is the first time that a Dutch team has won the award. The team received the award for improving large-scale numerical simulations with deep learnin…

Jorinde van de Vis wins the For Women in Science Rising Talent-prize for women in science, for her PhD thesis in cosmology and particle physics.

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published hundreds of thousands of unknown galaxies. The data are part of a project lead by Leiden professor of Observational cosmology Huub Röttgering. Both Dutch and international media reported extensively about the publica…

A signal that is present both in the centre of our Milky Way and in distant places in the universe could reveal the origin of dark matter. This is what Leiden physicist Alexey Boyarsky concludes in an article in Physical Review Letters.

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

Leiden students organised a Model United Nations (MUN) from 3 to 6 May in The Hague. An MUN simulates the working of the United Nations and is intended to allow students to learn about the practice of international relations. View the photo series.

On 23 February, Daniel Somart and Karolina Wróbel, students of the BASS took part in the 2023 SAGANET Awards, a competition in which participants can show a serious game they developed.

Joost Beltman (LACDR, Leiden University) has provided novel insights in the way T cells migrate towards virus-infected cells. This was accomplished by a combination of experimental research in the group of Ton Schumacher (Dutch Cancer Institute, NKI) and computer simulations in collaboration with Rob…

Synchrony in heart rate, skin conductance and pupil diameter plays a big role in human social interactions, such as gaining trust or being attracted toward each other. This is what Eliska Prochazkova found in several lab and field experiments. PhD defence on 4 March 2021.

When galaxies collide, do the black holes at their centre form a supersized black hole? This is what we think happens, but it's not as simple as that, according to Simon Portegies Zwart. Zwart, computer scientist and astronomer, has been awarded a VICI grant to research this phenomenon.

KM3NeT is a giant undersea neutrino detector, being deployed in the Mediterreanean Sea. Recently, it hit a six-fold milestone, celebrated with a fitting, double musical production.

Did he dare take a gamble with his PhD research? Jeroen Methorst didn’t have to think long about it. It could fail or turn out very well. The latter is the case. Methorst developed a computer system that helps researchers find the protein they need. ‘Our whole group is now using this program.’ Methorst…

‘I got into Nature last year, I was nominated for a faculty teaching award and my kids don’t care. But if your simulations get on The Big Bang Theory then that’s something!’ says Huib van Langevelde.

Samineh Bagheri is the first PhD candidate to defend her thesis fully remotely.

To honour the work of its longstanding chair Nick Ryan, CAA International provides the annual Nick Ryan Bursary Award. The Nick Ryan Bursary Award winner is chosen from each year’s student paper presenters. The award goes towards the costs of attending the CAA Conference the following year, up to a…

In the past 30 years, over 5,000 planets have been discovered outside our solar system. One common exoplanet is the lava world, a hot super-Earth with oceans of liquid lava. Mantas Zilinskas developed models to simulate possible atmospheres of these. Those simulations provide guidance for astronomers…

If three or more objects move around each other, history cannot be reversed. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers based on computer simulations of three black holes orbiting each other. The researchers, led by the Dutch astronomer Tjarda Boekholt, publish their findings in…

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.

A new computer simulation shows the promising possibilities of the booming field of topology. Smartly designed mechanical structures carry sound exclusively one way and are immune to fabrication errors. Publication on 17 July in Nature Physics.

The combination of academic and professional skills you gain in the MSc PA makes you an excellent candidate for positions in national and international governance and policy making, as well as for managerial positions in the private sector, after graduation.

The shock wave triggered by one of the five galaxies making up the iconic Stephan’s Quintet appears to be less disruptive than previously thought, with the shock likely being cushioned by dust particles in the surrounding gas. This is according to the analysis of the first scientific observations of…

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

Physicists propose the existence of sterile neutrinos that would explain three big mysteries in nature. To actually find them in particle accelerators, researchers need to know how they are produced and how they decay. PhD candidate Kyrylo Bondarenko has made predictions about this, which are currently…

Mechanics play a larger role in blood vessel formation, and other developmental biology, than previously thought. Cells appear to respond to mechanical signals, such as pressure. Through the extracellular matrix, a network of fibrous proteins, cells can supposedly exchange those mechanical signals over…

Anthropologist Rodrigo Ochigame studies how AI is changing the practice of scientific research. From astrophysics to mathematics to climate science, they find that the adoption of new AI models is raising questions about what counts as reliable scientific evidence.

Designing innovative algorithms, thinking outside the box, and brainstorming over coffee with his colleagues — this is what physicist Stefano Polla enjoys most. His success shines through in his nomination for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2024 for PhD thesis of the Year.

A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately. The cloud, with roughly 100 billion comet-like objects, forms an enormous shell at the edge of our solar…

The perfect ship is light and sleek for speed, but also needs to be strong and stable for safe sailing. These and other conflicting requirements make it difficult, even with a supercomputer, to find the ideal design. Computer scientist Roy de Winter has developed an algorithm that helps strike the perfect…

Although sugars are widely used in biological and medical research, their synthesis is still badly understood. Jeroen Codée has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for systematically studying the production of sugars. ‘I want to genuinely understand the reactions.’

On this page you can find information about previous CCLS events.

A 35-year-old uranium crystal will not disclose its secret: what causes a dramatic phase transition at 17.5 Kelvin? Thanks to a new artificial intelligence approach, half of the possible explanations are excluded, but the definitive answer remains to be found. 'It is very frustrating', says physicist…

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

Many astronomers suspect that most of the matter in the universe is invisible. So how can you weigh dark matter if you can't actually see it? Professor Henk Hoekstra is looking for a solution. Inaugural lecture 25 June.

On August 18, 2022, Henk Bodewitz, distinguished Indologist and emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University, passed away in his hometown of Utrecht.

What is dark matter? How do supermassive black holes form? ‘Primordial’ black holes might hold the answer to these long-standing questions. Leiden and Chinese cosmologists have identified a new way in which these hypothetical objects could be produced just after the Big Bang. Publication in Physical…