In 2022, Leiden will be the European City of Science. The preparations are in full swing, so we would like to give you a look behind the scenes. This time we talk to Ewine van Dishoeck. She is the driving force behind the annual programme at the Faculty of Science. As far as she is concerned, there…

How are stars and planets formed? Is life outside Earth possible? These questions are being researched by Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck at Leiden University. Her pioneering work has earned her the Kavli prize in the category of astrophysics. The prize consists of 1,000,000 dollars…

A large multidisciplinary team of experts on ageing has secured over €8.5m for a major study of which factors and solutions promote healthy ageing and increase vitality. The LUMC and the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) are two of the centres involved in this national research projec…

An international research team consisting of Katharina Riebel as leading PI and two international collaborators were awarded a Human Frontier Science Program grant for their proposal ‘Seeing voices’: the role of multimodal cues in vocal learning.

Chemist Alexander Kros and astronomer Joop Schaye are two of the four Leiden researchers who have been awarded a Vici as part of NWO's Innovation Research Incentives scheme. They each have 1.5 million euros to set up a research group and employ PhD candidates.

Optical detection of a single electron using a single molecule has never been done. Leiden physicist Michel Orrit and his team have now identified a molecule that is sensitive enough to detect an electron at a distance of hundreds of nanometers. The results are published as a cover article in ChemPh…

Chemist Roxanne Kieltyka has received an ERC Starting Grant of 2 million euros. In her lab, she creates gels that mimic the instructive material that supports cells in our body. With the grant, she aims to make these gels stiff and tough, and to create a bio-printed miniature heart ventricle.

Leiden researchers have carried out successful tests using a new method of packaging a cancer vaccine in nano-particles. The new vaccine has induced a strong immune reaction in mice. The researchers believe that this method can make an important contribution to the treatment of cancer. Their findings…

Researchers and clinicians at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) are about to begin a milestone clinical study. It will be the first time a stem cell gene therapy developed in the Netherlands is used in a clinic. The therapy will be used to treat children with SCID, a rare disorder where children…

Researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have successfully used stem cell gene therapy to treat a baby with the severe congenital immune disorder SCID. An important milestone: it is the first time stem cell gene therapy of Dutch origin has been administered to a patient, and also…

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…

How do you ensure that a drug has an effect on the right protein – and nothing else? Chemist Anthe Janssen explored various methods for determining the selectivity of potential medicines. He also looked at the substance BIA 10-2474, after a man died in a French clinical trial in 2016. PhD defence on…

Globally, the number of deaths from infections is on the rise as more bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. New classes are desperately needed. A promising resistance inhibitor is now being developed by the research group of Nathaniel Martin, Professor of Biological Chemistry. Inaugural speech on…

Anthe Janssen graduated ‘summa cum laude’ for the master’s programme Chemistry.He used NMR methods to gain insight in the syntheses and behavior of bio sugars. With this knowledge future therapeutics and research tools in hemical and medicinal biology can be developed. Anthe was awarded € 2.500.

Lecture

In a full lecture hall C1 the Faculty of Science started off the new academic year on Tuesday 5 September. The theme of the meeting was, just as it had been at the university's opening the day before, sustainability.

Laura Heitman won the prize for Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia and the 2017 RSC MedChemComm prize.

How did our universe come into being? Are there any other planets that support life? Read all about it in our new research dossier ‘Exploring the universe’.

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…

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.

Marc Koper, Professor of Catalysis and surface chemistry, has been awarded the EuChemS Gold Medal 2026. The prize is awarded every two years and recognises outstanding achievements in the field of chemistry in Europe.

A starring role for PhD candidate Andreea Nadaban during the annual meeting of the European Epidermal Barrier Research Network. With her talk about the arrangement of lipid molecules in the upper layer of our skin, she won the award for Best Oral Presentation.

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.

Former Chemistry PhD student Tiddo Mooibroek is one of the 25 nominees for the title New Scientist Science Talent 2017. Nobel prize winner Ben Feringa will announce the winner at the New Scientist Live: Nobelprijs event on June 22, after a rating of the candidates by a jury and a public vote.

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.

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…

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.

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,…

On this page you can learn more about the history of our Faculty Awards and view the previous winners.

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…

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…

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…

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…

Every student who wants to apply for the BSc Security Studies at Leiden University will need to start at Studielink, the national online registration system for students who want to follow a degree programme at a Dutch university. Afterwards, you can continue the online application process at Leiden…

Every student who wants to apply for the bachelor’s programme Archaeology at Leiden University will need to start at Studielink. The application procedure consists of three steps.

The application procedure is broken down into three parts.

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…

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.

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…

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…