Yesterday, eight professors were simultaneously inaugurated as ‘Medical Delta professor’, at Leiden University, LUMC, TU Delft, Erasmus University and Erasmus MC. Ariane Briegel, researcher of the Institute of Biology Leiden of Leiden University, also received the double appointment.

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…

Hastings College of the Law and Leiden Law School have a long-standing exchange programme. Each year, students participate in a student exchange programme. Likewise, professors from Hastings College of Law have been visiting Leiden Law School and vice versa.

Using artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics. With that, researchers from Leiden University are nominated by magazine KIJK for the Best Tech-idea of 2021. From September 14 onwards people can vote to crown one of the nominees as the winner.

An international research team is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently…

Five Leiden researchers have been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of up to two million euros will enable them to continue and expand their scientific research.

On the university’s birthday, professors teach a class of 10 and 11-year-olds during Meet the Professor. The professors were bombarded with questions.

Several consortia in which Leiden University is involved have been awarded Dutch Research Agenda funding. Leiden is the coordinator of five of these consortia. These five consortia will receive grants worth a total of almost 24 million euros. They relate to interdisciplinary projects that will bring…

Before patients can take a pill, scientists often spend years in the lab developing and testing a candidate drug. That often includes experiments with laboratory animals. As head of the rodent facility, Ilze Bot and her colleagues ensure that these experiments are conducted in an ethically responsible…

The Phase 3 clinical trial results of the promising Covid-19 vaccine of Johnson & Johnson are expected this month. The Dutch electron microscopy facility NeCEN helped develop the company’s vaccine, and they have now published their scientific findings in Nature Communications.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens and worldwide pandemics are increasing, making infectious diseases more prevalent. To develop new treatments, deeper knowledge of the interaction between bacteria and human cells is required. Ariane Briegel recently became a Medical Delta professor and studies such path…

How do people become involved in terrorist organisations? Liesbeth van der Heide sought the answer to this question in a Malian prison, where she interviewed terrorists in a tiny cell. She discovered that the will to survive and social context are often more decisive than individual ideological convictions.…

Eight scientists from Leiden University have been awarded a grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). With this Vidi funding, the researchers can set up an innovative line of research and further expand their own research group over the next five years.

'What nature made isn’t necessarily an optimized medicine to use in the human body,’ says Professor of Biological Chemistry Nathaniel Martin. That’s why a group of Leiden researchers is making a chemistry-based improved version of the frequently used antibiotic vancomycin. They received an NWO NACTAR…

What started as an idea during a social gathering led to an unexpected breakthrough in research on resistant bacteria. Biologists and chemists from Leiden developed a new substance that proves to be effective against bacteria resistant to antibiotics. They published their discovery in Nature Chemist…

What happens in the brains of people with psychiatric illnesses? With a €23.23 million gravity grant, scientists from different fields will search for biological causes over the next decade. ‘By joining forces, we hope to improve diagnosis and treatment for patients with these diseases.’

Leiden researchers from different disciplines look together at complex social problems. What happens when they join forces with artists? The results could be seen on Tuesday 11 June during a unique exhibition. Take a look for yourself:

Building more in urban areas is, in most places in the Netherlands, the smartest way to tackle the housing crisis. This is evident from research conducted by Janneke van Oorschot, published in a partner journal of Nature. Remarkably, this does not have to come at the expense of green spaces in cities.…

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

Research to experiment with bacteria that grow like plants has been granted the NWO XS grant. These bacteria use light and carbon dioxide to grow, and will be designed especially for use in the biotechnological field. Tijn Delzenne and his supervisor Dennis Claessen can spend 50.000 euros on the exp…

Four promising young researchers will be able to conduct two years of research at a university abroad thanks to a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The Leiden laureates are Renske Janssen, Girija Josh, Anne van der Meij and Yana van der Weegen.

Last Friday the global Antibiotics Awareness Week begun: an entire week dedicated to antibiotic use. Antibiotics researchers from the LACDR therefore set out to tell primary school pupils about their research. Through role-playing, pupils were drawn into the world of antibiotics: 'Can the teacher not…

Sebastian Pomplun manages to reach proteins with drugs even where this was thought impossible. That is why he and his research group have been allowed to join Oncode Institute. With nine others, he had been selected from 72 applicants to contribute to Oncode Institute's mission: to accelerate breakthroughs…

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.

Leiden researchers Arjen Doelman, Tom Huizinga and Manfred Wuhrer have been awarded ERC Synergy Grants worth millions of euros for their research on preventing tipping points being reached in ecosystems and helping eradicate rheumatism.

How do you count the nanoplastics in your body? Leiden researchers published a method in Nature Protocols today that should make this easier. Important for both environmental and medicine research.

Niels van Leeuwen is enrolled in the Master Public Administration: Economics & Governance. During the first stage of his master, he did an internship in the United States, at the economic affairs department of the Royal Netherlands Consulate General in Chicago. ‘There are more ways that lead to Rome…

‘To be honest, I don’t really care about what type of research is going on. Just let me do my own thing and everything is fine,’ according to biotechnical officer Davy de Witt. In this interview, he tells about his tasks and experiences at the Institute of Biology Leiden, where he has been employed…

As a student, Ratna Lachmansingh wrote her thesis on horror films. Now she is the director of Leiden International Film Festival.

Plants can’t run away from enemies. Still, it would like to keep life-threatening herbivores at a distance. This can be done with odours. Klaas Vrieling of the Institute of Biology Leiden found out with his team how plants change odour production to keep the munchers at a distance.

She has had the idea for seven years, but now environmental scientist and conservation biologist Kat Stewart finally gets to work on it. She has been awarded a Vidi grant by NWO to find out how DNA from water can be used to shed light on invasive species and their impact on native populations.

Alumni and researchers met at two well-attended alumni dinners in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. The alumni reminisced about their time in Leiden and got to see their lecturers once again.

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.’

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.

A meeting place for singing parrots. That is one of the ambitions of Michelle Spierings’ new project. With her awarded NWO XS grant, she wants to test the parrots’ hearing ability. ‘I am curious to see how they can recognise and imitate changing melodies. And it would be amazing to test that with a…

In 2022, Leiden will be the European Capital of Science. An enthusiastic team from our Faculty is already busy planning the activities. Today we speak with Marin Visscher. As a project coordinator, he seeks the connection between university and society.

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

The Board of Governors is pleased to announce that Professor Cisca Wijmenga has been appointed by outgoing Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf as its new member.

On the 30th of December, we received the sad message that our Kenyan colleague, Kennedy Kaminju Kariuki died on December 28, 2023 in the NW hospital in Nairobi at the age of 35 years from organ and heart failure. Kennedy was a PhD candidate at the CML, Leiden University.

A team of students from Leiden won the iGEM international biology contest in 2020 with their Rapidemic mobile testing kit. The kit makes it easy to detect viruses. The team has now been nominated for the Most Innovative Student in the Netherlands prize. Cast your vote and help them develop their inv…

On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11 February) RISE puts the spotlight on four women in our faculty. The Researchers in Science for Equality (RISE) network is launching a junior board on this special day. Their main task? Optimise the information provision between RISE and the…

BRAIN Biotech and the Leiden University will jointly develop an Aspergillus based production strain with high yield and thus contribute to a bio-based circular economy. The cooperation is based on BRAIN´s molecular tool BEC.

Rose Vossen has been named winner of the Young Star Award 2021. The Life Science and Technology student received the award on Monday from Ewine van Dishoeck, the founder of the award. Vossen wins a cheque for 2,500 euros for her exceptional results as a bachelor's student. During her final bachelor…

As of 1 September, Martina Vijver is the new Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences. She succeeds Arnold Tukker, who led the institute since 2013 and served the maximum term of two times four years. Vijver has been appointed for a period of four years.

Two Leiden research projects that focus on increasing the biodiversity of Dutch production systems for food and ornamental horticulture have started thanks to funding from the Dutch Research Council's KIC research programme.

Op zaterdag 3 juni vindt de Museumnacht Leiden plaats. Ook dit jaar zijn Leidse wetenschappers en studenten onderdeel van de programmering.

Everything biobased: Plastic, medicine and fuel. It seems like a futuristic utopia. But for how long? A collaboration of researchers now proposes an idea to accelerate the development process. By combining machine learning and laboratory automation, this biobased ideal may become a reality rather sooner…

Why are morpho butterflies blue? That is what high school students Frederique Kerstens and Koen van Griensven investigated in their high school profile paper at the Leiden Institute for Research in Physics. In doing so, they won the KHMW Profielwerkstukprijs 2023. ‘We didn't expect it, but are of course…

Drained leaves and plants stripped bare. Insects can completely destroy crops. Soon, these situations may be behind us, with the new pesticide developed by Leiden and Wageningen researchers. With their plant-based ‘insect glue’, insects are incapacitated.

Annemarie Meijer benoemd als vertrouwenspersoon promovendi.