Due to the unrest in the Middle East, many ancient Syrian manuscripts are no longer available or have even been destroyed. Professor of Old Testament Bas ter Haar Romeny received 77 microfilms of Syrian manuscripts, enabling him and his PhD students to research these ‘lost’ manuscripts.

The orbits of 27 stars orbiting closely around the black hole at the center of our Milky Way are very chaotic. As a result, researchers cannot predict with confidence where they will be in about 462 years. ‘That is astonishingly short,’ says astronomer Simon Portegies Zwart who collaborated on the r…

On 13 January 2020, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named 95 members ACM Fellows who have demonstrated excellence across many disciplines of computing. Among the new ACM Fellows is Professor Holger Hoos of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, who was specifically selected…

Two professors from China joining the research and education in Leiden, two Leiden professors going to China to share their knowledge and experiences in return. This is the exchange professorship between the Faculty of Science and Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU). This week, all four professors got…

Engaged, active students who can see the links within their discipline. These are key aims of the University vision on teaching and learning, but how do you achieve them? An interdisciplinary research team led by ICLON has developed an inventive method that helps lecturers do just that.

One of the holy grails of drug research is to be able to assess the safety of chemicals and pharmaceuticals without using laboratory animals. Researchers from Leiden University, among others, now receive a grant from the National Science Agenda to pursue that goal.

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?

Scientific research at the molecular level on a collection of medieval skeletons from Norton Priory in Cheshire, United Kingdom, could help rewrite history after revealing they were affected by an unusual ancient form of the bone disorder, Paget’s disease. Osteoarchaeologist Carla Burrell, attached…

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

Ton Schumacher, professor by special appointment in Immunotechnology at the LUMC and group leader of Molecular Oncology and Immunology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, has been awarded the NWO Stevin Prize. The Stevin Prize and the Spinoza Prize are the top scientific prizes in the Netherlands and…

In a festive and intimate award ceremony, plant scientist Omid Karami received the first edition of the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award out of the hands of Wim Klop, Director of the Biotechnology Center at DSM. Several speakers spoke about Krijn Rietveld and why Karami deserves the prize that…

Ten Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant, of up to 280,000 euros, will enable them to elaborate their ideas over a period of three years.

Roberto Arciero is part of RESPIRE project (Research Educational and Storytelling Project in Italian Remote Ecosystem), an international and interdisciplinary research team led by Martina Capriotti (University of Camerino) that received the National Geographic Meridian grant. Among the different topics,…

Gerard van Westen and his group, together with pharmaceutical company Galapagos, start on developing software that invents new effective molecules. They will receive an NWO LIFT grant of 280,000 euros, of which 63,000 euros will come from Galapagos. The company will also bring its expertise in biology,…

Restoring a natural plant environment on exhausted agricultural lands and in nature areas is difficult. We can speed this up by steering the soils towards the desired situation. This is what Martijn Bezemer, newly appointed Professor of Ecology of Plant-Microbe-Insect interactions at Leiden University’s…

It sounds futuristic, but it is possible: the creation of miniature organs of patients in order to study them and see how diseases develop and can be treated. This is what researchers from the LUMC, Twente University (UT), UMCG, TU Delft and the Hubrecht Institute hope to achieve in the next ten years…

Last year around 2,000 international students started a master’s degree at Leiden University. To make this possible, there are various grants that these students can apply for. One such grant is the LExS: the Leiden University Excellence Scholarship Programme. Three LExS students tell us about their…

LUCL is pleased to announce that Professor Johan Rooryck has been awarded both an NWO Horizon Grant for his project entitled 'Knowledge and culture', and an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant for his project entitled 'Lend me your ears: the grammar of (un)transferable possession' for a total of €2.75m.

A new way to decipher the light from distant worlds could give us unmistakable evidence of extraterrestrial photosynthesis, and maybe alien plants, finds astronomy author Colin Stuart in the New Scientist. In his article, he describes the work of the group led by Leiden astronomer Rob van Holstein.…

In 2013, Sylvestre Bonnet received an ERC Starting Grant to kill cancer with molecules that can be activated by light. Two postdocs and three PhD students later, the end approaches of his so far successful project.

Dr Ionica Smeets, one of the well-known ‘Maths girls’, has been appointed part-time Professor of Science Communication at Leiden University with effect from 1 July. Over the coming five years she will carry out research on science communication, how the subject is taught and how to raise students’ enthusiasm…

Happy students and proud families, friends and lecturers; on 13 July the first fifteen refugee students graduated from the Preparatory Year for teaching in Leiden. They started a programme in September at a Dutch university of applied sciences or an academic university. 'This is just the start!'

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected five Leiden professors from different disciplines as new members. Two of the new members are women.

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

Since May, Assistant professor BioTherapeutics Lu Su works in our faculty. Although she is still young, she already worked in many different fields and co-operated on two publications in big scientific journals. How did she become so successful and what motivates her to keep researching the possibilities…

Professor Jan Kolen was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology on September 1, 2018. We sat down with him and interviewed him about his background, the challenges he sees, and the future of our Faculty.

On 15 January, the winner of the famed LION Image Award will be announced. Submissions ranged from the famous 3d printed microboat to an eerily abstract graph depicting a Majorana fermion.

Gianne Derks is the MI’s new scientific director from 1 May. She has worked abroad longer than in the Netherlands and, after more than 27 years in Surrey, she dreams in English. Who is this new director and who or what managed to entice her to make the move to Leiden?

What is the influence of non-hereditary factors on our health, such as lifestyle, diet and exposure to harmful substances? The Exposome-Scan project, led by Leiden professor Thomas Hankemeier, has been awarded 3.2 million euros from the NWO Investment Grant Large programme to answer this question. With…

The Lorentz Center is a melting pot that is visited by researchers from around the world. ‘Miracles happen’ during the five-day interactive workshops at the Center. And there is an extra reason to celebrate the center’s 25th anniversary. On 28 April, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Leiden University…

Staff and student mobility, a cooperative education programme and the possibility of a joint research center in artificial intelligence and data science. A delegation from Chinese partner XJTU paid a fruitful visit to the Faculty of Science in the last week of October.

At science festival 'Over de kop', surprising brain facts alternate with confronting stories from the operating room. Researchers explain why our brains love beans and why you should never ride a racing bike without a helmet.

In an Advance Online Publication biophysicist John van Noort and others show using magnetic tweezers that DNA is folded in compliant helices of chromatin. This allows enzymes access to the DNA needed for gene expression. Van Noort's research group made the discovery in close partnership with researchers…

Imagine that you need to travel, but you don’t have a car and you’re dead broke. What do you do? Hitchhiking, of course! Leiden biologists found that certain bacteria use this very same tactic: their spores hop on motile bacteria and use them as a taxi, ensuring they reach the right environment to f…

Children are perfect scientists: they are bursting with curiosity, they want to know how the world works and they go exploring every day. Yet many children barely get a chance to be engaged in science. A number of scientists from the Young Academy want to change that. They have received 150,000 euros…

For many students, a summer school abroad is a fun and useful way to spend the summer. This year, because of the travel restrictions, many summer schools were held online. There was no less interest from students though. What is it like to study in a different country, but digitally? Or to travel abroad…

The channel through which two cell components exchange material appears to form at the edge of their contact surface, and not in the middle. This was discovered by the Leiden physical chemists Jelger Risselada and Edgar Blokhuis together with researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.…

How does climate change affect the migration routes of birds? Mainly negatively, according to a new study from Yali Si from the CML. ‘It changes the timing of natural events differently in each region,’ she explains. ‘This can lead to a growing mismatch between the availability of food and the supposed…

Tuberculosis stands as one of the most lethal infectious diseases worldwide. A significant challenge in combatting tuberculosis lies in the emergence of antibiotic resistance triggered by genetic alterations, commonly known as mutations. These mutations can diminish the responsiveness to antibiotics,…

16 April was a special day at the Faculty of Science. In honour of the collaborations with the Chinese partner university, it was declared Xi’an Jiaotong University Day.

After two years in the Faculty Board, Student Assessor Zoë van Litsenburg makes room for a successor per September 1, 2022. Let’s meet the new Student Assessor Imen el Idrissi. ‘I want to focus on the communication between the Faculty and the students.’

The Spanish Society of Soil Science has chosen as the best thesis of 2015 (call 2016) in Spain to the CML-researcher Daniel Arenas Lago, for his research at the University of Vigo that expands and deepens in new knowledge about adsorption and retention of heavy metals in soils, an issue increasingly…

Whether you want to repair a car or you’ve simply lost your keys: there’s a good chance that in the future there will be an augmented reality (AR) application that can help you. A recent event looking at AR in the workplace (AR op de werkvloer) brought together professionals and students to explore…

Strong on substance, a good sense of humour and also a bit chaotic. This is how colleagues describe Suzanne van der Pluijm. She started as the new Executive Director at the Faculty of Science on 1 June. Who is Suzanne and what does she stand for? Get to know her in seven questions.

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.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, died 300 years ago. 2023 has therefore been designated the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek year. The new Unimaginable exhibition in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is about the amazing world that Van Leeuwenhoek made visible. What was so special about the way he worked?…

At the Faculty of Science, forty per cent of the employees are of a non-Dutch nationality. Amongst PhDs that is even sixty per cent. How are they doing in a time of working at home in a different culture, when travelling is not possible? Biologist Astri Kusumawardhani is the second in this series to…

On 23 September, the Leiden alderman for the Management of Public Space was presented with a Ginkgo Biloba in the Blekerspark. This special 'Peace Tree' was grown from a seed from a tree that survived the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. The Peace Tree is being temporarily housed in Leiden's Hortus…

In the largest study of ancient DNA ever conducted, an international team of scientists has revealed the complex story behind one of the defining periods in European prehistory. The study is published this week in the journal Nature.

Her plan was to obtain a PhD, but, during her master’s, alumnus Sangbreeta Moitra discovered that her true interest lay in applying neuroscience in everyday life.