Since February 1st, 2017 Célia Fonseca Guerra is appointed as professor at the LIC with a chair in applied theoretical chemistry. She will be a member of the Theoretical Chemistry group. Her research interests are related to bioinorganic chemistry and catalysis and her appointment at the LIC will strengthen…

ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate - a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery…

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

Laura Heitman of the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) has been nominated for the Prix Galien Research Award. This important pharmaceutical prize honors young, prominent researchers whose scientific research is of great importance for fundamental or clinical drug research.

The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) has elected six professors from Leiden as members.

Pancras Hogendoorn, Professor of Pathology and Dean of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), received an honorary doctorate from Semmelweis University in Budapest on Friday 8 October 2019.

The death of his grandfather in 1988 motivates Changsheng Wu to become a scientist. In 2016, he is awarded the C.J. Kok Jury Award for his thesis on novel antibiotics. Two years later, he will become a Professor at Shangdong University, at the age of 30 years.

The research group of Eric Snijder, Professor of Molecular Virology (LUMC), has been conducting research on coronaviruses for decades. Then in March this year their work accelerated at an unprecedented rate. The first new results are now available: insight into how the virus replicates.

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Leiden PhD candidate Jo-Anne Verschoor discovered that nearly twenty percent of the bacterial strains she studied could degrade plastic, though they needed some encouragement to do so. ‘Bacteria are just like people,’ says Verschoor. Her research was published in the journal Communications Biology,…

The doors of the new Gorlaeus Building are officially open! With an additional lab wing, new lecture halls and offices, a library, a brasserie, and spaces for student associations, the building offers a vibrant and inspiring environment for research, study, and social interaction. Explore on your…

Alexander Kros studies supramolecular systems in a biological environment. The unifying theme between the projects in my lab is specific molecular recognition, i.e. the intermolecular interaction between complementary molecules with high affinity and selectivity. Studying, imitating and dissecting processes…

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…

Key research articles, reviews and books of the Chromatin group.

The Master’s programme Health, Ageing and Society trains its students to become academic Health, Ageing and Society professionals and engaged citizens who are competent and trained internationally and interdisciplinary. They are able to contribute to solutions for the challenges facing our ageing so…

Discover the outstanding researchers and educators recognised by our faculty. This page gives an overview of all prize winners.

The application procedure is broken down into three parts.

A Leiden Groningen student team has reached the European finals of the BISC-E competition. In this annual competition students have to come up with a sustainable solution to a major social problem. The team invented Suckerspheres: a natural alternative to the plastic microbeads that are still widely…

Today, 13 students at Leiden University have started a crowdfunding campaign to collect money for research into the possibilities of growing crops on Mars. Their research will contribute to the knowledge of our galaxy. The project is in the context of the iGEM competition.

While offshore wind farms generate clean and green energy, scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the harmful impact they may have on marine life. To get a better overview of these impacts and to find the best locations for future wind farms, environmental scientist Yali Si and her colleagues…

A team led by Erik Danen from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research has received a 3 million euros NWO Science Groot grant to unravel the first steps of metastasis. Danen will work together with biologists and theoretical and experimental physicists from Dutch Universities. ‘Understanding these…

Featuring the world’s first neural synthesizer, artist Guy Ben-Ary and his collaborators will perform at the TodaysArt Festival in The Hague on 21 September. For this performance, he collaborated with the lab of Erik Danen to transform neural stem cells into neural networks on a chip.

While the Netherlands was in lockdown because of the coronavirus, PhD candidate Koen Rijpkema began his research into the same virus. In the lab, he developed molecules that can inhibit an important viral enzyme.

For the first time, it was shown in living cells how the bacterium E. coli regulates genes that help it survive in a new environment. Biochemist Fatema Zahra Rashid managed to do this using a technique she fine-tuned. Her research into changes in 3-dimensional chromosome structure offers clues for ways…

It has only recently been discovered that single-celled organisms (bacteria and archaea) also have histones—proteins that structure DNA. Now, Leiden PhD candidate Samuel Schwab has found that the histones in these organisms are much more diverse than previously thought. Schwab and his colleagues describe…

Two things are needed to produce fuel from sunlight: an antenna that harvests light, and a light-driven catalyst. The most efficient antennae contain bacteria. An international team headed by Huub de Groot imitated them and discovered how they function.

Xander Tielens, Professor of Physics and Chemistry of the Interstellar Space, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to study polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. The combination of astronomical observations, computer models and lab research makes the research highly interdisciplinary.

Researchers at the Universities of Amsterdam (Uva) and Leiden together with the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute have received a €10,6 million ERC Synergy Grant to develop innovative therapeutic approaches to target glioblastoma. This is a deadly primary brain tumour for which no curing…

An unprecedented space telescope, an astrolab that makes space ice and molecules that may lead to the origin of life… The Ice Age project has all the prerequisites to become a very fascinating research project – if it is not one already. Leiden astronomers Melissa McClure, Harold Linnartz and Will Rocha…

Her specialist field is molecular astrophysics, and she is the most quoted scholar in her field. In this, the year of astronomy, she is the ideal person to give the Dies lecture at the university with the world's oldest astronomy institute; it goes without saying that the lecture will be on the newest…

Ewine van Dishoeck was broadly covered in national and international media with her prestigious Kavli prize for astrophysics. She won 1 million dollars voor her groundbreaking work on star and planet formation and on extraterrestrial life.

No less than 172 international master students coming from 30 different countries visited the Faculty of Science on 29 August during the OWL: the Orientation Week Leiden.

For his significant original contributions in the field of carbohydrate research, chemist Jeroen Codee will be awarded the biennial Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry.

Two AI research projects receive funding; one in the field of oncology and one in the field of cardiology.

From Mexico and Indonesia to China and Italy: people from all over the world read about the Leiden Observatory publication on the birthplace of comets. This research suggests that all comets in our solar system might come from the same place: a specific range in the flat disk of dust and gas that once…

Bart de Smit has been appointed to the position of Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science for four years, as of 1 January 2019. After Han de Winde stepped down as Vice Dean in September, De Smit already took over his duties ad interim.

On the occasion of the Women & Girls in Science Day, BBC Science Focus Magazine highlighted 6 prominent female chemists. Among them is Leiden professor Ewine van Dishoeck: 'Astrochemist investigating the building blocks of life'.

Eleven researchers of the Faculty of Science are on the 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list of Clarivate Analytics. Only 0.1 per cent of researchers are included in this list, literally making them one in a thousand.

Professor Philip Spinhoven has been appointed acting Scientific Director of the Institute of Psychology until 1 September 2021. He succeeds Michiel Westenberg who resigned from the position 1 January 2021, because he could no longer combine the responsibilities of Scientific Director with his academic…

On Tuesday evening 22 August, our very dear colleague Jo Hermans passed away. Jo had been ill for some time, but continued to enjoy life in good spirits until the very end. He meant a great deal to Leiden University and will be remembered with fond memories by many.

On 9 February 2026, Bastiaan Rijpkema, Professor of Jurisprudence, was elected as a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW).

On 9 February 2026, Bastiaan Rijpkema, Professor of Jurisprudence, was appointed as a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW).

How does astronomy benefit you? The new single-episode podcast Cosmic Perspectives explores the impact of Dutch astronomy on society: from building positive international relationships to the transfer of life-changing technology.

Could water be present in planet-forming disks before the formation of rocky planets? The James Webb Space Telescope may have found evidence for that. Webb has for the first time observed water in the inner disc around young star where at greater distance, giant planets have already formed. The research…

A recent collaborative paper between researchers from the Theoretical Chemistry & Catalysis and Surface Chemistry groups has been chosen by the renowned Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics journal as a

Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics, was presented with the Kavli Prize by King Harald V of Norway during a ceremony on 4 September in Oslo. The prize consists of a gold medal and one million dollars.

In health care, artificial intelligence is quite normal: it is used, for example, as an aid in making diagnoses. However, artificial intelligence is not yet used as much in drug development. A new prestigious partnership is therefore going to investigate how artificial intelligence can contribute to…

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.

Bringing together institutes and research groups, how do you do that? The Faculty of Science set up a joint research theme and financed three PhD positions. After four years, the profiling programme Endocannabinoids expires. ‘It really brought us together, and the collaborations remain.’