In their quest for materials that conduct electricity without resistance at moderate temperatures, scientists usually work on their chemical make-up. Now Leiden physicists have come up with a radically new approach: pinching holes in a periodic pattern. Publication in SciPost.

Electrons that spin synchronously around their axis, turn out to stay superconducting across large distances within magnetic chromium dioxide. Electric current from these electrons can flip small magnets, and its superconducting version could form the basis for a hard drive without energy loss. Publication…

A collaboration of physicists and chemists organized the LEELIS conference on new computer chip technology in Amsterdam on 10-11 November. Leiden physicist Joost Frenken is director of the organizing institute ARCNL.

Science Magazine has published three back-to-back papers on an important discovery in solid state physics. Leiden physicist Jan Zaanen wrote a Perspective article on the subject in the same issue of 4 March.

We don’t understand how some materials become superconducting at relatively high temperatures. Leiden physicists have now found a surprising connection with auxiliary black holes. It enables us to use our knowledge of black holes on the mystery of high-temperature superconductivity. Publication in Nature…

If computers work on superconducting current, they won’t consume any energy. Leiden physicists have now gained control over a new type of superconducting memory elements. Publication in Nature Communications.

Two Leiden physicists took part in the Lindau conference in Germany from 26 June to 1 July. They met Nobel prize winners from their field.

Electric noise can be useful for scientists but inconvenient for chip manufacturers. They do share a wish to predict the amount of noise. PhD student Sumit Tewari overturns a century-old law relating noise to current. He defends his thesis on March 27th.

Leiden physicist Milan Allan and his group have discovered an apparent paradox within a material that has zero electrical resistance. They measured trapped charges, while charges should in theory keep flowing in the absence of resistance. The discovery could provide a missing piece of one of the big…

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For the first time research has been done on species literacy in the Netherlands. Children in primary schools know about 1 in 3 native animal species. Publication in Biological Conservation.

To be eligible for Astronomy and Science Communication and Society at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Astronomy at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements. PLEASE NOTE: The specialisation High-Tech Innovation starts in September 2026.

To be eligible for Astronomy Research at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible forAstronomy and Data Science at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Astronomy and Cosmology at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Astronomy and Instrumentation at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Astronomy and Business Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

For almost fifty years EL CID has been the whirlwind start of their studies and student life for thousands of first-year students. With up-and-coming DJs, food trucks and informative workshops, ambitious EL CID committees have made sure that the introduction week has grown into a mega-festival.

International bachelor’s and master’s students started the OWL on Monday morning. During this introduction week they get to know their new university, city and each other.

Forum essays provide a framework for intellectual exchange and debate about the role of diplomacy around a particular theme. The essays are argumentative contributions and are shorter than research articles.

In your first year at LUC you gain the basic knowledge and lay the foundation and skills for your specialization in year two and three.

The English Language and Culture programme focuses on four areas, namely: philology, literature, linguistics and language acquisition. It also offers several specialisation options, ranging from renaissance literature to the use of metaphors.

Lecture

This Thursday, January 18th 2024, our esteemed colleague Jan Zaanen passed away. Jan was one of our star scientists, larger than life, with an unabashed, boisterous drive for the best of physics at the Institute Lorentz, at the Leiden Institute of Physics and in the full international scientific community.…

NWO has awarded a Vidi subsidy to a total of 89 young and innovative researchers. Leiden researchers have won twelve of these subsidies and three subsidies have gone to the LUMC. Each researcher will receive up to 800,000 euro to develop a particular research theme or to set up a research group.

PhD defence

At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars, which are called exo-planets. They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems.…

The research group Science Communication and Society has been physically within the Institute of Biology (IBL) since 2012 and has become a formal part of the institute in 2018. The mission of this group is understanding how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and s…

Located in the friendly small city of Leiden in the centre of the Netherlands, Leiden University has for centuries been at the forefront of developments in science and mathematics and that excellent continues today, with world-leading department of mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry and computer…

Chemical reactions go hand-in-hand with an energy exchange with the environment in which they take place. Surfaces offer a variety of energy dissipation channels, constituted by the nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom of the atoms at the interface. Aiming at an improved future harvesting of energy,…

Bachelor projects are available in

The master’s specialisation Cosmology at Leiden University is positioned at the interface between Theoretical Physics and Observational Astronomy. The main elements are theory, data analysis and numerical simulations, with research on the origin of dark matter as one of the highlights.

Astronomers want to understand the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day, and what the future will hold. In Leiden they focus on two key questions: ‘How did stars and planets originate’ and ‘How were galaxies and black holes formed in the young Universe?’ A new generation of telescopes – just…

Biophysicist Alireza Mashaghi and his collaborators are taking up the fight against muscular dystrophy: genetic disorders that cause muscle weakness. They want to inhibit the clumping of proteins that results in toxic aggregates. For this, the team receives 550,000 euros from Health Holland. The team…

It is partly thanks to Leiden professor Michel Orrit that we are today able to study individual molecules. He just missed winning a Nobel Prize, but is today the recipient of another important scientific award: NWO’s prestigious Spinoza Prize.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to 14 Leiden researchers. This grant of a maximum of 850,000 euros will enable them to start a new research group and develop their own line of research over the next five years.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2021, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.