Do you consider applying for the Media Technology MSc programme? This is your chance to meet our staff and students in real life, and learn how we connect creativity, science and personal curiosity!

The team 'git merge -s octopus solution cup' has won the programming competition 'Northwestern Europe Regional Contest' on November 17. For the first time in 20 years, a team from Leiden has won this contest. On top of that, it is the second victory for the team in a month.

Leiden University and Springer launched International Journal of Multimedia Information Retrieval.

Is the possibility of computers making decisions for us in the future realistic? Holger Hoos, professor of Machine Learning, gives his opinion about the future of artificial intelligence in the television show ‘The future is fantastic’ on NPO3.

An international committee has assessed computer science research at all Dutch universities in the period 2009-2014. For its computer science research, Leiden was awarded the ‘highest’ mark (1) for relevance to society.

From Monday 19 July onwards, eighteen children between the ages of 10 and 12 are learning the programming language Hedy. In the Snellius building of Leiden University they will be taught the first principles of programming this week.

Christiaan van Gorkum passed away on 30 October 2015.

In the future top Dutch speed skaters may skate even faster thanks to a skate full of electronics. This ‘measuring skate’ gives top skaters and coaches information about the skater’s technique and motion. It can measure the dynamics at play between the foot, the ice and the skate.

Which brilliant scientist will be our Discoverer of the year 2018? Will it be a physicist, biologist, drug discoverer or an astronomer? Or an environmental scientist, a mathematician, chemist or computer scientist? As of now, you can cast your vote.

Leiden University and VU Amsterdam are developing a joint research project for a digital platform on which you can compose and share storylines with the use of images. Such interactivity will make a boring high school history lesson much more exciting and personalized. Furthermore, it will stimulate…

On Tuesday, January 30th, the first symposium of the Data Science Research Programme took place at the Sylvius Building.

Do you consider applying for the Media Technology MSc programme? This is your chance to meet our staff and students, and learn how we connect creativity, science and personal curiosity!

Bart Custers was appointed Professor of Law and Data Science on the first of July. This makes him the first professor to be appointed for the SAILS program. SAILS is a university-wide initiative that focuses on broadening and deepening research into artificial intelligence. In addition, SAILS will focus…

Can we study what makes us human through the eyes of a robot? Peter van der Putten and Maarten Lamers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science are collecting examples of robots with humanlike qualities: emotional, creative, curious, helpless and even religious robots.

On September 7, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science participated with a team of six students in the first edition of the Capture the Flag event 'Challenge the Cyber'. They were placed second in this national hacking competition for students.

Marcus Specht, director of the LDE Center of Education and Learning, has been appointed as Professor of Digital Education since November 15. He has joint appointments at the three LDE universities. In Leiden he will join Felienne Hermans in the Programming Education Research Lab (PERL).

Thomas Bäck wins the 2015 IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award for his contributions in synthesizing evolutionary computation.

From publishing students, to addressing bottlenecks in education logistics and a completely new bachelor’s programme. Scroll through our highlights on educational innovation and achievements of our outstanding students.

The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

SAILS started the new year with a new professor. Joost Batenburg will join the SAILS team with his expertise in Imaging and Visualisation. This makes him the second professor appointed for the SAILS programme.

Europe's latest quantum computer is set to arrive in the Netherlands. The Dutch IT cooperative, SURF, which supports education and research institutions, has secured funding from the European EuroHPC programme to make this possible. Researchers from Leiden University will play a key role in the project,…

NWO awarded a grant for novel research on Complex and Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The grant will fund a four-year research project in which they hope to devise a method to explore and find optimal designs for CPS. Todor Stefanov, Associate Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced…

The exhibition Return is available in HUBspot from 25 January until 28 January. Return is an exhibition of students from the Leiden Master's Media Technology, with a focus on the influence of technology on mankind.

A new article, published by researchers from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science and the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that 50% of Dutch Facebook users are exposed to junk news at least once. In addition, junk news causes more user engagement than…

Four scientists will receive the TOP grant for Physical Sciences from the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). They are astronomer Ignas Snellen, mathematicians Tim van Erven and Charlene Kalle and computer scientist Siegfried Nijssen. The funds will be used to finance temporary research…

In a recent Physics World podcast, PhD candidate Felix Frohnert from Leiden University explains how his team uncovered hidden connections in scientific literature by using machine learning routines. With this information, it’s possible to predict promising new research ideas in quantum physics. Listen…

AI networks CLAIRE and ELLIS have jointly won the prestigious German Artificial Intelligence prize. The WELT newspaper awarded the prize, worth 100,000 euros, last week in Berlin. The AI Prize is an innovation award for pioneering achievements in AI research and development.

On September 15th a new series of lectures will start, the Joint Lectures on Evolutionary Algorithms (JoLEA). This series of events is aimed at disseminating the latest, top-quality research on EAs. The lectures will feature world-renowned speakers, local researchers, and PhD students.

Three students of Leiden University’s “MSc. ICT in Business” programme, Erwin Marges, Stefan Zhelyazkov and Georgios Valouras, have been awarded with the prize of Galileo Master of the South-Holland region, for their business plan idea “SnowMate Alpine Assistant”.

Prof.dr.ir. Hai-Xiang Lin is appointed on 1 March 2015 as part-time professor on Data Analytics for Environmental Modelling at CML on behalf of the R. Timman foundation. He will join the CML-department of Industrial Ecology. He has a position at the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Faculty…

New funding allows IBL-researcher Herman Spaink to purchase a measurement device for more studies on human diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis using zebrafish as the model system.

With the What's Next? series we hope to inspire current Media Technology MSc students, show the variety of paths taken after the studies, and bring together alumni. Editions of the series are generally organized around a particular theme by Media Technology MSc students themselves, and followed by social…

With the What's Next? series we hope to inspire current Media Technology MSc students, show the variety of paths taken after the studies, and bring together alumni. Editions of the series are generally organized around a particular theme by Media Technology MSc students themselves, and followed by social…

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.

The first successful Leiden Networks day took place on September 23, 2016. Six world-renowned speakers (see photo) in the field of complexity and network science provided their view on the field.

Students and researches from all faculties at Leiden University attended a lunch seminar to discuss with four topic experts the rise of AI and the challenges this poses for various governance structures. The event was hosted by Leiden University’s interdisciplinary programmes GTGC and SAILS.

The easy-to-learn programming language Hedy has been used more than 100,000 times in no more than 9 months. Felienne Hermans was a guest in the broadcast of the radio program Science071 to tell more about it.

On April 14 we will celebrate the launch of our Faculty action plan ‘diversity and inclusivity’ with a symposium. We will present the action plan and our colleague Professor Tomas Brage will be keynote speaker. He is the Director of Education at the Physics Institute of Lund University in Sweden and…

Scientists of Leiden University and Technical University Delft are going to predict how and where defects in sewer systems arise. They are working with light sensitive camera’s, based on new automated multi-sensor inspection with stereo vision and laser range scanning. Their models are going to process…

Our digital infrastructure brings new opportunities, but it also makes us vulnerable. The answer does not lie in technology alone. But how do we help organisations get to grips with the complex theme of digital security? Welcome to the world of cybersecurity governance, the world of Bibi van den Ber…

A Leiden University Day, new agreements on exchanging PhD students and a keynote speech by Geert de Snoo at a popular symposium. In November, a Faculty of Science delegation paid a fruitful visit to eight universities in China.

Every person on earth can read another person’s mind. Not in the way psychics or witches do, but by putting themselves in the shoes of others and considering how they perceive the world. This kind of empathy greatly facilitates communication and interaction. Max van Duijn studies this phenomenon to…

Just like the professional riders from the Jumbo-Visma team, amateur cyclists will soon be able to analyse and improve their performance. Leiden data scientists working with the cycling team are making their smart data model available so that every serious cyclist can keep track of their fitness.

Many of us are working from home at the moment, but our children are at home too. While this can be fun, parents sometimes need a bit of peace and quiet. Leiden computer scientist Felienne Hermans has developed Hedy, a programming language that teaches children how to program. An educational way to…

Advanced microscopy to understand life and fight disease: that’s the goal of the new NL-BioImaging network that will develop and integrate state-of-the-art microscopy technologies and services. Researchers from all Dutch universities, including Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre,…

The Faculty of Science has received no less than seven Veni grants this year. Camila Correa, Max van Duijn, Stéphanie van der Pas, Sergii Pud, Mónica Varela Álvarez, Joseph Callingham, and Melissa McClure will receive a maximum of 250,000 euros to further develop their own research ideas over a three-year…

The perfect ship is light and sleek for speed, but also needs to be strong and stable for safe sailing. These and other conflicting requirements make it difficult, even with a supercomputer, to find the ideal design. Computer scientist Roy de Winter has developed an algorithm that helps strike the perfect…

Learning how computers can process and describe images just like human beings do. It is one of the key elements of the research of Michael Lew, who sees Deep Learning as a promising way to achieve this goal. On the 1st of January 2021, he was appointed Professor of Deep Learning at the Leiden Institute…

Today, March 15 2016, the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship were formally published in the Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Data.

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…