Thanks to Ian Cook’s ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ MOOC, thousands of students have researched where their clothes come from. How does this geographer from the University of Exeter manage to inspire such enthusiasm in his students? He and his student Zahra Ali will explain all during the Education Festival…

Research into depression in children, Leiden alumni in the Dutch House of Representatives and an exceptional achievement by one of our students: what do this topics have in common? They are among our most read stories of 2021.

Tjerk Oosterkamp's group is conducting what is perhaps the coldest research in the world. The researchers have cooled a sensor to below 2 millikelvin - almost as cold as absolute zero. This allows them to make extremely sensitive measurements. PhD candidate Jaimy Plugge helped build the setup: ‘We are…

Brechtje de Jong, a Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences master’s student, and Ilse de Weert, a Pharmacy student, have won the KNMP Studentenprijs 2024. They received the award for their outstanding academic performance and research internships.

The small quantum world and our world of perception obey different laws of nature. Leiden physicists search for the border between both worlds. In an article published soon in Physical Review Letters they set an upper limit.

Bernet Elzinga (Clinical Psychology) is one of the seven scientists from the Leiden University who has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands. The funding will enable her to do research for the next five years…

An international team of astronomers has published a map of the sky showing over 25,000 supermassive black holes. The map, to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is the most detailed celestial map in the field of so-called low radio frequencies. The astronomers, including Leiden astronomers,…

The first Leiden Science Family Day on Saturday 6 October was a great success. During the ‘Weekend of Science’ more than 700 visitors, including 350 children, visited the Faculty of Science. With a program full of experiments, lectures, guided tours and demonstrations, visitors were given a glimpse…

On Tuesday 4 September, Martina Vijver delivered the scientific lecture during the academic opening of the Faculty of Science. Martina is professor in Ecotoxicology at CML and would like to have collaborations with colleagues from the Leiden Centre of Data Science. We had a brief interview with her.

Leiden physicists use a new method to measure so-called surface plasmons. Researching these particles could lead to new light-based technology, including faster internet.

The worldwide race to the quantum computer is in full swing. This computer can bring about a breakthrough in discovering medicines and new materials. Leiden researchers, together with the TU Delft, are taking part in the race. There is now a dossier online about their work.

CERN has approved the construction and operation of SND@LHC, a neutrino detector at the Large Hadron Collider. It's a precursor for SHiP, a detector meant to detect dark matter. Leiden physicist Alexey Boyarsky is one of the initiators of both SHiP and SND@LHC.

American physicist and quantum computing pioneer Seth Lloyd is the 65th Lorentz professor. He will deliver the Ehrenfest lecture on 5 June, and several more lectures on quantum computing on 11, 18 and 25 June.

Jan Melissen, associate professor at ISGA and editor-in-chief of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and his team have been awarded 10,000 euros from the 'Valued' fund. This pilot fund, implemented by the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) aims to increase the interaction between science…

Graphene has held a great promise for applications since it was first isolated in 2004. But we still don’t use it in our large-scale technology, because we have no way of producing graphene on an industrial scale. Leiden physicists have now visualized for the first time how atoms behave in between graphene…

Scientists need individual photons for quantum cryptography and quantum computers. Leiden physicists have now experimentally demonstrated a new production method. Publication in Physical Review Letters on July 23rd.

Is it possible to diagnose diseases using molecular switches? The new international consortium LogicLab will address this question. Leiden chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and Leiden pharmacologist Thomas Hankemeier are involved in the project. LogicLab will run for four years and will receive over 3.5 million…

Ionic liquids are important in scientific research because they can apply a lot of charge over a surface. Leiden physicists have now found that the charging process of ionic liquids purely depends on opposite charges attracting each other. Chemical reactions are sometimes involved, but not essential.…

PhD defence

Op dinsdag 10 januari 2022 zijn tijdens de facultaire nieuwjaarsreceptie de jaarlijkse Meijersprijzen en de scriptieprijzen uitgereikt.

An unprecedented space telescope, an astrolab that makes space ice and molecules that may lead to the origin of life… The Ice Age project has all the prerequisites to become a very fascinating research project – if it is not one already. Leiden astronomers Melissa McClure, Harold Linnartz and Will Rocha…

For almost fifty years EL CID has been the whirlwind start of their studies and student life for thousands of first-year students. With up-and-coming DJs, food trucks and informative workshops, ambitious EL CID committees have made sure that the introduction week has grown into a mega-festival.

On January 16, 2022, our respected and beloved colleague Prof. dr. Bas Edixhoven passed away after a short period of serious illness.

Originally from Romania, Catalin Popa has been working at our Faculty as a Postdoc for two years now. He is a landscape archaeologist with a deep interest in the role of archaeology in society. “We should also produce a message for non-academics. One that is shaped for people that don’t have the time…

Sinds september 2010 werken Geerten Waling en Anne Heyer in het NWO project ‘The Promise of Organization’.

As part of the celebrations around the 25th birthday of the Faculty of Archaeology, a panel discussion on the future of archaeology was organised on December 13th. For this discussion an international panel of scholars was invited to give their perspective and enter into conversation with our Faculty…

How can we guarantee the safety of the crown witness scheme for both crown witnesses and lawyers? How can we ensure that online conversations between lawyers and their clients remain confidential? And what are the risks of extra secure communication tools?

It’s better to cut our nitrogen emissions now than to solve the consequences later at great expense. That’s the lesson we can learn from the Dutch nitrogen crisis, according to nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman. In Science, he shares this lesson with other countries. According to Erisman, we should…

A smart city is of no use if its residents don’t trust it. Tanaquil Arduin, Chief Data Officer at the Municipality of The Hague, and Bram Klievink, Professor of Digitalisation and Public Policy at Leiden University, explain how this can be avoided – to some extent. ‘Make sure civil servants and residents…

Leiden has scored highly with the recent Vici awards. Of the 31 Vici winners announced by NWO, 4 are researchers in Leiden. The winners are: Professor of Family and Child Studies Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, information scientist Peter Grünwald, astronomer Linnartz and Professor of Buddhism Jonathan…

Arts and culture, Concert

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Conference

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PhD defence

PhD defence

Lecture, Studium Generale

PhD defence

Study information

Study information

Study information

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…