Dear students and researchers at our institute,

From a new generation of antibiotics and more-effective vaccines to a map of dark matter and new light on Hindu traditions. Four researchers from Leiden University have received a prestigious €2.5m ERC Advanced Grant to develop their research.

Theoretical physicist Helmut Schiessel receives an NWO Projectruimte grant of 390,000 euro. He will use this budget to hire a postdoc and a PhD student to continue his research on flexibility of double stranded DNA.

Six researchers from Leiden University have received an ERC starting grant. This grant of on average 1.5m euros will enable the researchers to launch their own project, form their own research team and develop their best ideas.

Frederique Visser is Research Master student and Student Assistent to the Foundation for Austrian Studies. She writes about her experiences on her research trip to Austria.

For the 10th SAR conference on Artistic Research, the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) is back in Switzerland where the society was founded.

Leiden researchers have found clues to why a rare pregnancy disorder is mild in some babies but life-threatening in others. Their discovery opens the door to a test that could identify severe cases during pregnancy. Fortunately, a treatment already exists.

The European Research Council has awarded five Leiden researchers an ERC Consolidator Grant. These subsidies of up to a maximum of two million euros will enable the researchers to further expand their scientific research.

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.

Together with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and creative partner Big Orange, Laura Bertens, Sara Polak, Yra van Dijk, and Thony Visser will investigate possible uses of the voice in cultural memory.

On April 1, Marco Spruit, Professor of Advanced Data Science in Population Health at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), will deliver his inaugural lecture ‘Translational Data Science in Population Health’. Spruit will use the opportunity…

With the final version of his research report entitled NEW INPUTS, Richard Barrett concludes the documentation of research carried out for the Lectorate “Music, Society and Education” at the Royal Conservatoire.

Eighteen researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant gives promising young researchers the opportunity to develop their ideas for a period of three years.

To give a better idea of the research at Leiden University, a new website has been launched that lists the University’s institutes together with the disciplines that they cover. But the institutes also work together intensively.

Seven Leiden researchers have been awarded a prestigious Vici grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

When a bacterium becomes more resistant to one antibiotic, it sometimes becomes more sensitive to another. To better understand this interaction, researchers from the Leiden Institute of Biology (IBL) and the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) under supervision of Daniel Rozen and Coen…

Fourteen Leiden University scientists appear on the 2018 Highly Cited Researchers list, which was announced on 28 November by Clarivate Analytics.

Four green research institutes in Leiden are joining forces to integrate evolution and biodiversity research, at local and at the national level. Pivot in this collaboration is Frederic Lens.

The PhD Project “Agents of change? (Hi)stories, perspectives, and every-day practices of intra-Schengen border officials” as carried out by PhD Candidate Maryla Klajn got off to a flying start.

Three Leiden researchers will each receive a Vici grant of 1.5m euros. They are historian Cátia Antunes, cell biologist Dennis Claessen and archaeologist Marie Soressi. This grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) will give them the opportunity to form their own research group over the next five…

Scientists at the LUMC are working hard on potential virus inhibitors, antiviral screening and a treatment for COVID-19. SteunLeiden.nl has started a crowdfunding campaign for this research, under the hashtag #wakeuptocorona. Professor of Virology Eric Snijder explains why this is desperately needed…

Within a month, the Wake Up to Corona crowdfunding campaign had already raised 600,000 euros for corona research in Leiden. The goal is to raise enough money for the LUMC to set up a second laboratory that is safe enough for research into the new virus. The initiative has not escaped the attention of…

Dr Amany Soliman joined the NVIC as a postdoctoral research fellow in October 2017. She is a lecturer of modern history and international relations at the Mediterranean Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University. For her PhD thesis, she examined the nationalist movements in Spain,…

LUCL is pleased to announce that two Vrije Competitie Grants have been awarded to LUCL researchers. Prof.dr. Lisa Cheng and dr. Jenny Doetjes have been awarded a grant for their project 'Understanding questions'. Prof.dr. Michael Kemper (UvA) and prof.dr. Jos Schaeken have been awarded a grant for the…

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities uses data research to help solve urban issues. Three interdisciplinary research projects will begin soon. Leiden sociologist John Boy explains.

Quantum Delta NL, a research programme in which Leiden University participates, has been awarded 615 million euros from the National Growth Fund to help develop the Netherlands into a top player in quantum technology. This has been announced at the presentation of the honoured proposals in The Hague…

Sixteen researchers at Leiden University have received a Veni award from the Netherlands Organisation for Academic Research (NWO). This award offers promising young researchers the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years.

Cybercriminality and cybersecurity are hot topics, in the academic world as well as elsewhere. But there is room for improvement in this research, says Bibi van den Berg, Professor of Cybersecurity Governance at Leiden University. Inaugural lecture 8 June.

Researchers from Leiden and Groningen have found a fossilised paw of one of the last Dutch brown bears. They made their discovery in the water supply system in the dunes near to Noordwijk.

Embryonic stem cells have the remarkable ability to develop into any type of cell. On their way to become for example a liver or a heart cell, they must repeatedly decide between alternative developmental paths. How they make these decisions is largely unknown. An international team of biophysicists…

Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been conducting a covert sabotage campaign against Europe. The ‘Bewaken en Beveiligen’ (Surveillance and Security) project team at Leiden University has investigated the scale of these operations and compiled its findings in the report Russian Operations…

Political scientist Gisela Hirschmann (Leiden University) has been awarded a fellowship at Harvard University. During the 2020 Spring semester she will join the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs to further her research on multilateralism.

Research by Assistant Professor Willemijn Waal has gained attention from various media outlets. Waal investigates, among other things, whether the Greek alphabet might be older than previously thought.

How do you ensure that people who have had a stroke get the right therapy at the right time? This is the question researcher Jorit Meesters wants to answer.

The SRON space research institute, Leiden University and the TU Delft are appointing six researchers to jointly carry out space research. The research will focus on exoplanets, the evolution of structure in the Universe and technology for developing new pioneering space instruments.

Frank den Hollander has received the Humboldt Research Award of €60,000. He was nominated by two German colleagues with whom he is working together for an extensive period of time. ‘The award was a complete surprise to me.'

Cancer is one of the main causes of death in the Netherlands. Leiden researchers are working to improve the treatment of different types of cancer in order to increase the patient’s quality of life. A better understanding of how cancer develops will make it possible to deliver personalised and precise…

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…

The ‘Community Resilience Fund’, a programme of the Canadian federal government, approved a research grant for Dr. Bart Schuurman of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs.

The Leiden African Studies Centre (ASCL) will become part of the University from 1 January 2016.

Seven researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. This will enable them to start their own project, build their research team and put their best ideas into action.

On the evening of Tuesday January 31st, the physics institute organizes its triannual meeting for over seventy high school teachers. The program consists of lectures on developments in modern physics and the latest initiatives in the world of education.

Dr Mark Leiser, Assistant Professor in Law and Digital technologies at eLaw, has been appointed an International Research fellow at the Coordinated Research Center in Information Society and Law of the University of Milan in Italy. The aim of the Center is to conduct research on issues related to the…

Three major research projects involving Leiden scientists have been awarded a grant from NWO’s Gravitation Programme. The projects are on innovation processes, organs-on-chips and quantum software.

The Netherlands eScience Center has announced to fund a new Path-Finding Project led by Dr. Dorothea Samtleben from the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). This project aims to make the processing of detection signals more efficient for the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, which is currently under construction…

‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

Marjolein Soethoudt was awarded the Unilever Research Prize 2013 for the University of Leiden. The prize was bestowed upon her because of her thesis about her 9-months Master’s internship that she performed in the department from September 2011 until July 2012, in combination with her other study re…

Eleven Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant will enable them to develop their research ideas for a period of three years.

On 6 May 2022, Alies Jansen presented her work on 'Security Force Assistance in Iraq' to the Conflict, Peace and Security thematic area during a research feedback seminar.

Jiemiao Chen is running a study on eye-contact with a virtual audience. The study involves introducing oneself to the audience while wearing eye-tracking glasses and filling out some questionnaires. Participation is possible until mid-June.