‘If we don’t start talking about this, who else will?’ This is what Arjan Lankester, paediatrician/immunologist at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Professor of Paediatrics, thought when it seemed that various extremely effective gene therapies for rare diseases would no longer be available…

After 2 years of planning, designing, testing and adjusting, the brand-new low-vibration physics lab at the new Gorlaeus Building of the Science Campus is working like a charm and ready to make its mark in the world of science. Also, the renewed facility for the production of liquid helium is all do…

The European Union has invested ten million euros in the so-called iNEXT-Discovery consortium. The goal of this new consortium is to enable European researchers to extend innovative structural biology research. The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) is also part of iNEXT-Disovery, which…

Each year, poppies disperse seeds that grow into a new generation of flowers. Sometimes, some of the seeds postpone their germination for a few years, for example when they’re covered by a layer of sand. Only when the sand disappears, do they start to sprout. Margriet Oomen did mathematical research…

When professor Frank Israel graduated at Leiden Observatory some forty years ago, little did he know that one of his theories would be making headlines in 2018 - in the form of a 3D animation on the Internet, no less.

On 1 January Minna Valjakka was appointed Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory from a Global Perspective. Valjakka sees her appointment as 'extremely topical' because of the discussions about the decolonisation of the arts: 'Art teaches us not just about art, but also about contemporary…

It's a race against time for Charles Jeurgens, Leiden Professor in Archival Studies. He is investigating how the colonial authorities created the archives in the National Archive in Jakarta. ‘The acidic paper deteriorates rapidly in this hot and humid climate.’

The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

For the first time researchers have succeeded in placing a layer of graphene on top of a stable fatty lipid monolayer. Surrounded by a protective shell of lipids, graphene could enter the body and function as a versatile sensor. The results are the first step towards such a shell, and have been published…

Amorphophallus decus-silvae, or the ‘penis plant’ as it is known, has just flowered at the Hortus botanicus. It flowered for two days, and then the pollen, which the male flowers produced was collected. As far as the plant experts at the Hortus can tell, this was just the third time that this species…

Dark matter represents around eighty per cent of the total mass in the Universe. Yet, we still don't really know what it's made of. Astronomer Pavel Mancera Piña is looking for answers. With a Veni grant from NWO and the most advanced telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, he will investigate…

Through an NWO grant, chemist Rik Mom has received a tenure track position at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, where he obtained his PhD cum laude in 2017. Mom will study the storage of sustainable energy by means of splitting water. Using new methods, he will investigate on an atomic scale which…

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.

Can we improve the living environment of people with dementia with software and smartwatches? Daniela Gawehns did research in a care facility for people with dementia as part of the project 'Dementia back in the heart of society'. This way, she tried to find out whether an open living environment leads…

Within the same species of butterfly many different wing patterns can occur. How is this possible? According to researchers Ben Wielstra and Emma Berdan, of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the answer lies within supergenes. A supergene is a part of a chromosome that contains many strongly linked…

Professor Jasper Knoester has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University. He will take up the role on 1 January 2022. Knoester is currently Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at the University of Groningen. He succeeds Paul Wouters (Dean of the Faculty of Social and…

Research by Leiden University, LUMC and the Public Health Department (GGD Haaglanden) in The Hague has shown that over a quarter of the families in the city who took part in the survey experience some form of food insecurity. Some families have too little money to make a healthy meal or are worried…

What moral concerns do people have when they encounter the financial sector in their everyday life? Erik Bähre's ERC consolidator project 'Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’ aims to find out. In collaboration with Brechtje Boeke, five short documentaries from…

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.

The largest galaxies in the Universe feed off cosmic oceans, which helps them grow. This is the presumption of an international team of scientist with two Leiden astronomers, based on observations of the ‘Spiderweb’ galaxy. The researchers published their evidence in Science on 2 December 2016.

Birds around airports are more aggressive and sing as if they have hearing loss. Collaboration between researchers of Manchester Metropolitan University and the Institute of Biology Leiden has led to surprising new findings about the impact of anthropogenic noise on birds around airports. Publication…

The Horizon 2020 project ImageInLife has started on 1 January, followed by a kick-off meeting at the coordinating University of Montpellier at the end this month. This Marie Skłodowska-Curie training network brings together European groups that work on the imaging of vertebrates and offers fourteen…

Leiden University is participating in a project to reassemble Roman vessels from between 80 - 200 AD. The 'Zwammerdam ships' are already world famous in the world of archaeology, and guest researcher Tom Hazenberg hopes to extend this fame beyond its academic boundaries.

If you look at the postwar cartoonists of Dutch origin, Bernhard Willem Holtrop is certainly the most interesting, according to Frenk Driessen. He wrote his PhD thesis on Holtrop - who drew for HP/De Tijd and Charlie Hebdo, among others - and then also published it as a book.

On 8 February 2016, Dr Jennifer Tour Chayes, Director of Microsoft Research in Boston and New York, will be presented with a Leiden honorary doctorate by Frank den Hollander, Professor of Probability Theory and Statistical Physics.

An external visitation committee gave the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) an outstanding assessment. In terms of research quality and relevance to society, the IBL gets the highest score: excellent. The increase with five new female professors also receives praise from the committee.

That it was students who started the protests in China against its zero Covid policy makes things more dangerous for politicians. China expert Frank Pieke explains the role of students in China, what makes the protests unique and what might happen next.

Leiden physicists have managed to detect a single molecule called dibenzoterrylene in a new crystal, and found that it is a candidate component for a quantum network. Future quantum computers will need such a network to work together while maintaining their advantages. Publication in ChemPhysChem jo…

The Leiden Science Run 2019 has raised a record sum of 12,135 euros for refugee student foundation UAF. No less than 101 teams – also a record – and the sponsors CORPUS and Janssen Biologics raised the amount.

Student of International Studies Susanne Reitsma has a remarkable passion: water. In April 2015, she was elected vice president of the World Youth Parliament for Water, in which capacity she works for worldwide access to clean drinking water and sanitation. What does Suzanne find so special about water?…

Tuesday 7 September sees the release of the book ‘Plots stond het Leidse leven stil’ by Charlotte Boin, a freelance writer from Leiden. This book of interviews gives an impression of the turbulent effect of coronavirus on the lives of students, researchers and partners of Leiden University.

The pesticide thiacloprid turns out to be more harmful than previously thought. It can disrupt the lives of freshwater invertebrates and their communities, upsetting the balance and functioning of entire freshwater ecosystems. This was shown by ecologist Henrik Barmentlo and colleagues, their research…

American physicist and quantum computing pioneer Seth Lloyd is the 65th Lorentz professor. He will deliver the Ehrenfest lecture on 5 June, and several more lectures on quantum computing on 11, 18 and 25 June.

Advisory Board member Francesca Forno shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

Physicist Jelmer Renema will spend two years conducting research at Oxford University in Great Britain funded by a Rubicon grant from NWO.

An indian stepwell on a nanoscale. That is what postdoc Nakkiran Arulmozhi calls the pattern he saw when he corroded a special kind of platinum crystal. The unique images show the destructiveness of the process, but also show how predictable it is.

Leiden Biology student Lukas Kiefer has won the Unilever Research Prize 2018 for his research into efficient production of a new antibiotic. Kiefer: ‘I want to make biological medicines available to people in need.'

The logic seems inescapable indeed. The bigger the population, the higher the probability it contains an Einstein. Hence, bigger populations are more likely to develop complex culture.

On 21 March The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) hosted the Life Sciences Café. Around 60 people from neighbour companies from the Leiden BioScience Park visited the facility for cryo-electron microscopy to get a glimpse behind the scenes. Head of NeCEN Ludo Renault believes it was…

Aqueous solutions of proteins and carbohydrates separate into two parts with an extremely ‘soft’ boundary surface. The surface tension between these two parts can be manipulated, for example by adjusting the pH balance. This can be used to develop emulsions of a water-based solution in another aqueous…

Leiden University Libraries has made a large number of unofficial poetry journals from China accessible online in its Digital Collections. This opens up thousands of pages from an internationally unique collection of unofficial Chinese poetry for teaching, research, and the general public, including…

Hybrid Workshop: In person and online on 26 – 27 January 2023.

The present market regulations make it extremely risky to invest in green energy, and this is impeding the fight against climate change. This is what Oscar Kraan writes in his dissertation. PhD defence on 25 April.

In the Netherlands, 1.55 million people suffer from cardiovascular diseases. Yet, acute cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke, often occur unexpectedly. That is because many people do not know they are at risk for such an event. Immunological researcher Amanda Foks and her colleagues…

Violent conflicts and civil wars in Chad impede most rural households' access to food security, agricultural activities and access to essential services such as health care. In her dissertation, Nakar Djindil Syntyche denounces this issue. She obtained her PhD on 24 November.

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

Leiden University has published its Annual Report for 2018. Although it too has faced complex themes in the last year such as staff workload, internationalisation, social security and funding, it has made significant progress in achieving its ambitions.

A piece of corrugated rubber can function as a simple computer, displaying memory and displaying the ability to count to two. Leiden physicists describe the computing rubber in the journal PNAS. ‘Simple materials can process information, and we want to find the principles behind that.’

Our dear colleague and friend Kathy MacDonald passed away unexpectedly on August 9th, 2022, a few days after her 46th birthday. Her sudden passing came as a tremendous shock to her colleagues and friends at the Faculty of Archaeology and to colleagues and former students both in The Netherlands and…

The life of a researcher is not easy, as many a scientist will confirm; but doing fieldwork in an environment of conflict and violence is extremely compex, attests the account of Dr Roland Ziébé, veterinarian in Cameroon and researcher at both the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) and…