After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

Aske Plaat is the scientific director of LIACS, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Systems. He is also an ambassador for Leiden University's LGBT+ Network. His enthusiasm shines through when he explains why.

Early November, a delegation of the Faculty of Science visited two Indonesian universities to shape the collaboration in bioscience. The Faculty also opened a new Indonesian office in Yogyakarta.

Emmely Benschop (41) has been working as the new director of the Centre for Professional Learning (CPL) in The Hague for several months now. She sees significant growth potential.

Computer scientist Matthijs van Leeuwen is one of four science faculty members who obtained the Senior Qualification in Education in 2021. What was that like and what drives him? ‘In my own education I would have liked to see more attention paid to the responsibility that machine learning and data mining…

How can you tie together scientific research and practical applications? That is exactly what Professor of Translational Data Science Marco Spruit is concerned with, he tells FMT Gezondheid. 'It's about taking socially relevant questions as a starting point for your research.'

How do you set up successful interdisciplinary collaborations? That is the central question of a Leiden symposium. On 6 June, we look at cooperation and decompartmentalisation between public institutions. The language of the symposium will be Dutch.

In the Gorlaeus Building, there will be a brand new faculty bar for students and staff. From hundreds of entries, a faculty jury chose the name for this bar. The new bar will be called 'The Fusie'. 'This name exudes togetherness and cosiness,' says FWN assessor Nalani Verwoord. 'And it has an additional…

On Friday evening 14 December 2018, around forty students from the Humanities and Science faculties gathered together in the Leiden city centre to take part in a very Dutch tradition: ice skating! On the floating ice rink, Alpha, Beta, Dutch and international students came together to enjoy this typical…

It is a warm day. The sun is shining brightly while biologist Marco Roos makes his way through the bushes towards a peculiar little plant. Insects buzz, birds chirp. In the background rises the LUMC: at the Bio Science Park in Leiden, people and nature come together in a special way.

Two Leiden legal scholars have been awarded funding from the KNAW pilot fund 'Science communication by scientists: Appreciated!'. The fund supports scientists who have demonstrated a continued commitment to science communication.

Pre-Islamic Arabia was barren, barbaric, and isolated. At least, that's what many Arabic writers and historics argued. Ahmad Al-Jallad debunks this myth. For this, he received the Gratama Science Prize during the opening of the academic year.

SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, is holding an open day on Sunday 25 September. It has had a branch at the Leiden Bio Science Park since 2021 and works closely with Leiden University.

The Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP) is very important not only for the city of Leiden but also for the Leiden region and the Netherlands as a whole. This is the finding of an investigation conducted by the Leiden-Leiderdorp Audit Committee. The large-scale development of the LBSP in recent years has…

Electronic versions of our publications can be obtained by sending an e-mail to Esther van den Bos: bosejvanden@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

Are you in need of some rest, stressed about an exam, or feeling under the weather? Since a few months you can find Mindfulnest at the Science Faculty. Assessor Ava Bauer and student psychologists Petra Penning and Koen Linders explain what the Mindfulnest can mean for you.

On 20 February 2019, a special meeting on data science took place in the House of Representatives. The aim of the meeting was to start a dialogue with government organisations about data developments within the government.

In June the Final Festival took place, the closing event of the 'Social Science Lab'. New participants of Honours College Science and Society presented their solution for a current social problem.

Scientists are regularly confronted with issues of integrity. You can learn all about the subject in a free online course.

Overview of the Asia Programmes offered at Leiden University.

PhD

Research on art is often compared to other forms of scientific research. Professor Henk Borgdorff believes that's unfortunate. 'Research on art is absolutely one of the front lines of science.' Inaugural lecture 10 February.

The fact that scientists are increasingly better able to access molecular cell and tissue data also brings with it a new challenge: how can scientists find the information they need for research among the vast amount of data available?

Making sensitive data reusable through synthetic data generation

The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

King Willem-Alexander visited Leiden on 6 December to open the new wing of the Leiden Instrumentmakers School. Students of this vocational programme make instruments needed for scientific research.

The unemployment replacement rate data set, assembled by Olaf Van Vliet & Koen Caminada (version 1, January 2012), provides data on unemployment benefit schemes in 34 welfare states from the 1970s until 2009. The current data set includes all 27 member states of the European Union and 7 non-EU OECD…

Plant architecture has distinct forms in different plant species, but also within a species the finalarchitecture of a plant is determined by its gradual development and changes therein induced by environmental conditions during the plant’s life cycle.

-

To an algebraic curve C over the complex numbers one can associate a non-negative integer g, the genus, as a measure of its complexity.

Cigdem Oguz defended her thesis on 13 June 2018

Our team consists of the following members.

The Department of Child Law offers organisations consultancy expertise in the field of national and international child law and children's rights.

Delineating psychophysiological endophenotypes of social anxiety disorder

In this dissertation, matching, entropy, holes and expansions come together. The first chapter is an introduction to ergodic theory and dynamical systems.

The master's specialisation Child and Adolescent Psychology consists of three main parts: the mandatory and elective courses, a thesis and an internship.

Working as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: for many students it would be their dream. Alumnus Tom Groot Haar is busy making it a reality. 'My career seems like a preconceived plan, but it wasn't.'

By comparing individual health data with population data, doctors can provide personalized health advice and patients can learn from each other's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, professor of Applied Data Analytics shows how personal data can have predictive value.

The Leiden wall formulae, Einstein's sink or the signature wall of Ehrenfest. It are just a few of Leiden's hidden science treasures. Alumnus from the Leiden Observatory Alex Pietrow described a few of these places on travel website Atlas Obscura.

As of 1 November W&N has a wellbeing officer. Alexandra Blank will commit herself to the wellbeing of our students. Students, but also lecturers and mentors can approach her with ideas and initiatives to support students.

Modern computer-aided simulation tools used by various industries produce gigabytes of data. But currently, they take days and even up to weeks of computation effort. To make the best use of all these data, the DAMIOSO project focuses on developing algorithms and tools for managing, mining, and optimizing…

In zoos, at festivals and in a mobile lab at the market: everywhere, Mariska Kret tries to understand human and animal emotions with her distinctive behavioural research. Now she has received the Mercator Sapiens Stimulus of €1 million for her efforts.

Erik Zürcher (1928–2008) is still considered an authoritative source in research on Chinese Buddhism. A new collection of his publications serves as an occasion for an international conference on Buddhism in Leiden. Princess Beatrix, who knew him well, will be in attendance at the opening.

Conducting experiments next to the huge speakers of the Alpha Stage at Lowlands. This was reality for researchers Max van Duijn and Tessa Verhoef, and they were loving it. 'Yesterday evening we were completely covered in mud.'

The people behind The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and its online platform.

One of LUCIR’s key objectives is to bring together scholars and students of International Relations. To this end, LUCIR regularly organises events such as conferences, roundtables, lectures and book launches.

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

On 28 October 2022, Yao Yuan spoke at the conference in Rome on 'Understanding national security concerns in light of FDI screening', jointly organised by Università Telematica internazionale UNINETTUNO and Uppsala University.

Spitting cobra venom composition has been influenced by defensive behaviour according to an international research team. This may have originated from the arrival of human ancestors. Students at the Institute of Biology Leiden made an important contribution to the study. Publication in Science on 22…