Can a robot rekindle the waning interest in Buddhism in Japan? University lecturer Peter van der Putten researches the philosophical and social questions related to artificial intelligence. He also investigates whether computers and robots can take over creativity, emotions and other human characteristics.…

The KNVI (Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging van Informatieprofessionals) awarded Thesis Prizes for Informatics and Information Science

During the 19th International ICE-IEEE ITMC Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE), 24-26 June 2013, The Hague, The Netherlands, Christoph Stettina et al. won the best paper award.

In the BNR Newsradioprogram De Nieuwe Wereld, professors Aske Plaat (Data Science) and Catholijn Jonker (Explainable AI) of the computer science institute of Leiden University discuss about decisions made by computers. From self-driving cars to intelligent soap pumps: should we be able to follow the…

Natural Computing is the field of research that investigates both human-designed computing inspired by nature and computing taking place in nature, i.e., it investigates models and computational techniques inspired by nature and also it investigates phenomena taking place in nature in terms of information…

The Sixteenth International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN XVI) will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands on September 5-9, 2020. Leiden University and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are proud to host the 30th anniversary of PPSN.

Thanks to deep learning, computer program AlphaZero plays better chess than the best person. The computer wins because it can predict further ahead than a human being through pattern recognition. Aske Plaat discusses this special development in Dutch newspaper NRC. He expects the major tech companies…

Bike Labyrinth is international market leader in providing virtual reality exercising for elderly care.

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.

As part of their M.Sc. program, ICT in Business students work on projects inspired by concrete problems coming from an actual situations at companies.

After a long run-up, the time has finally come for Frank Takes and Matthijs van Leeuwen. Together, they will become the new directors of education (OD) at the LIACS institute. Takes as OD of the bachelors and Van Leeuwen for the masters. 'We have been working together as colleagues for years,' Van Leeuwen…

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

Four female computer scientists share a common goal: to showcase the significant contributions of women in computer science and inspire their students. Together, they are organising this year’s Alice & Eve event, a one-day symposium dedicated to celebrating women in computer science. The event, scheduled…

AI can help scientists to collect data about the earth faster. This saves them a lot of time on trying to figure out how to analyze all the data they collect. Julia Wasala, PhD student at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Sciences(LIACS), tells us how AI can be used to save time.

Bringing young, enthusiastic and driven academics from different disciplines together, that’s the goal of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL). As a new member, Assistant professor Jan van Rijn is excited to look at AI from different perspective. ‘I want to bring my expertise together with different point…

By chance, computer scientist Hans-Dieter Hiep (Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) discovered a ‘gaping hole’ in a widely used method for evaluating software security. Hiep patched the hole, causing quite a stir in his field. 'It’s not pleasant when a PhD…

‘In the field of AI, Leiden is still a relatively unseen university,’ says Thomas Dohmen. The brand-new Director AI Collaboration Center, would like to forge a Leiden AI collaboration network, with sustainable and impactful relationships between the university and civil society organisations. The question…

Lecturers had a week to move their courses online. An enormous challenge because remote teaching definitely wasn’t commonplace at Leiden University. Suzan Verberne, a lecturer and researcher at LIACS, shares her experiences. ‘I tried to do too much in my first week working from home.’

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…

Thomas Moerland studied medicine and mathematics in Leiden and has a lifelong fascination with the origins and workings of intelligence. He brought all that together in his popular science book Van IQ naar AI (From IQ to AI).

How ethical is research involving humans and robots? And can research on artificial intelligence cause problems when it ends up in the wrong hands? In any research involving humans or their data, the ethics committee assesses where the issues are. Associate professor at LIACS Suzan Verberne chairs the…

Search engines are getting better at answering our questions. And chatbots are increasingly likely to search the internet for relevant sources. ‘Search engines and chatbots will become more closely entwined’, says Professor Suzan Verberne.

Giulio Barbero and Matthias Müller-Brockhausen did their PhD research at the Leiden University Game Research Lab.

Five consortia within the Perspectief programme that include Leiden researchers have received funding to start their research projects. These projects focus on (further) developing technological innovations, with societal and economic impact at their core.

On this page you can find information on past events, either organized or funded by SAILS.

Museum De Lakenhal issued an open call for creative solutions to the problem of growth addiction. From over 500 submissions, they selected 15 artworks for the exhibition 'If things grow wrong'. These include the creations of Leiden researchers Peter van der Putten and Evert Jan van Leeuwen.

The European Commission has released 50 million euro to strengthen artificial intelligence in Europe. Five consortia were selected to spend this 50 million to prepare artificial intelligence research in Europe for greater investment. With the funding, four new networks of centres of excellence in artificial…

On November 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Wessel Kraaij as one of the 2017 Distinguished Members. ACM Distinguished Members have made a significant contribution to the field of computing, computer science or information technology. This year, worldwide 43 scientists received…

Students of the Science Faculty of Leiden University have chosen Frank Takes, researcher and teacher at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, to be the Teacher of the Year. Impressively enough, Takes also became the runner up Discoverer of the Year.

The Faculty of Science has reinforced the collaboration in China during a group trip late November. Representatives from four institutes visited ten Chinese top universities and interviewed over 130 students in PhD workshops in Beijing and Shanghai.

‘A woman with a mission’. In this honourable way, Dean Geert de Snoo described computer scientist Felienne Hermans at the official opening of her new research group Programming Education Research Lab (PERL). He is right: Felienne has a very important mission. With her new research group, she will do…

How did Google's computer programme AlphaGo become so powerful? On June 29, developer Aja Huang elaborated on this during a lecture in the Gorlaeus building.

Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, may be used as an alternative treatment option when antibiotics fail. Leiden researchers have studied the structure and function of a novel bacteriophage that could be used to treat one of the WHO bacterial strains of concern where new treatments are urgently…

Within 20 years, intelligent machines will play a major role in society. ‘Selfdriving cars will be 90% safer than human-driven cars and will change transportation globally,’ says artificial intelligence scientist Bart Selman of Cornell University. He gave the first Ada Lovelace lecture of the Leiden…

Friso Selten recently started a PhD position that is part of the SAILS program. This PhD project is a collaboration between FGGA, LIACS, and eLaw, and is supervised by Bram Klievink (FGGA), Joost Broekens (LIACS), and Francien Deschene (eLaw). In the project Friso will investigate the influence of artificial…

Andreas Bender, Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry in the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Leiden / Amsterdam Center for Drug Research, received the

Did you know that algorithms can help with the prevention of air pollution and ships sinking in the sea? A team of Leiden University researchers have worked together with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management to look in data-driven inspection of ships. In this interview, Gerrit Jan…

By making smart use of available data, the health and care of people can be substantially improved. Marco Spruit wants to use language and machine learning in the coming years to identify and solve the biggest care issues in the region of The Hague. He has been appointed Professor of Advanced Data Science…

Humans perceive the world through different senses: we see, feel, hear, taste and smell. The different senses with which we perceive are multiple channels of information, also known as multimodal. Does this mean that what we perceive can be seen as multimedia?

How can data science improve tax administration? Mark Pijnenburg, a senior data scientist at the Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration, decided to investigate this in a dissertation. He talks about his experiences: 'Sometimes a technique is scientifically interesting, but not applicable in real…

The most commonly used method for the taxonomic identification of tree trunks is wood anatomy. The number of experts in this area is decreasing, and education to become an wood anatomists takes many years. With the help of technology computer scientists of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science…

A team including staff from Leiden University won the Open Initiative Trophy on 11 February, a prize for the best open science initiative in the Netherlands. The winners developed Reprohak, a hackathon-like event where participants repeat research to see whether the results were reproducible.

Leiden University computer scientists Yu Liu, Yanming Guo and Michael Lew are a step closer to their ultimate goal: search engines with visual recognition. Their publication of a new algorithm for fusing multi-scale deep learning representations has been received with great enthusiasm. No other algorithm…

The origins of Surinamese rice, a digital twin of the Earth and a large big-data project in the Chilean sky: three Leiden scientists receive an ENW-KLEIN grant for innovative, fundamental research.

How is it that the internet works so well, with billions of users sending millions of gigabytes all together every day? That's because the foundation of the internet is solidly set up. Yet sometimes there are problems on the internet. For example, when certain systems misbehave and disrupt the routing…

Just like scientific articles, patents cite scientific literature to support their findings. These references provide valuable information on how science is used to develop practical applications. However, extracting this information from patents is not that simple.

Can we use quantum computers in a way that is also relevant to society? With the help of a 2-million-euro NWA grant, Leiden University will work with partners such as Surf, Google and Volkswagen to demonstrate that quantum computers are also of value outside the lab.

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

Data science is of vital importance in preventing future outbreaks of viruses, Professor of Data Science Aske Plaat argues. Inaugural lecture entitled ‘Data Science and Ebola’ on 13 April.

The third edition of the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award was won by Anne Dirkson, former LIACS PhD student. During her PhD she researched the automatic collection of patient experiences from online forums. ‘With this work, Anne has shown how the exchange of knowledge between medical professionals,…