Two Leiden Science researchers received an NWO-XS grant for their research. Both projects are highly promising, but also high-risk. Macrophages that trap bacteria and data storage made from 2D materials convinced the board of their potential.

The highly successful deep-sea telescope KM3NeT can now expand both its size and scope. Using a new type of microphone for underwater use, the telescope will attempt to detect the sound produced by neutrinos as they travel through the sea. The data collected will also be of great interest to other research…

Leiden physicists use a new method to measure so-called surface plasmons. Researching these particles could lead to new light-based technology, including faster internet.

The first Leiden Science Family Day on Saturday 6 October was a great success. During the ‘Weekend of Science’ more than 700 visitors, including 350 children, visited the Faculty of Science. With a program full of experiments, lectures, guided tours and demonstrations, visitors were given a glimpse…

The Casimir Research School is to receive an € 800,000 subsidy from the NWO Graduate Programme to further integrate the master's study and PhD research. Minister Plasterk judged the Leiden-Delft Casimir plan to be one of the best.

This summer, the Casimir Research School celebrates its first lustrum. To mark the occasion and to commemorate the fact that Hendrik Casimir would be 100 this summer, his widow Josina Casimir-Jonker has endowed the Research School with a fund to support the activities of master's students.

Physicists, including Dorothea Samtleben from Leiden University, are building a giant underwater telescope to unravel the origin of neutrinos and to solve the mystery surrounding dark matter. The first detector has now been installed. Once it is finished, the telescope will be three cubic kilometres…

Leiden physicists are helping Wageningen plant researchers to study unpredictable plant embryos. For this, they are using a novel two-photon fluorescence microscope, aided by a 30 thousand euro ZonMW grant.

Packages of DNA strands containing silver, measuring just two or three nanometres in size. Leiden physicists Donny de Bruin and Dirk Bouwmeester create these packages, which can enter living cells on their own. They then activate the silver with light, causing the cells to break down. This could, in…

Three fundamental research projects at Leiden in physics, chemistry and medical science have received funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). They involve research on magnetic fields in the universe, the role of myeloid cells in cancer immunotherapy and the evolution of ancient proteins.

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…

For the first time, scientists have traced back a high-energy neutrino to its source in space. It was produced by a so-called blazar—a supermassive black hole. Researchers from neutrino detector IceCube report this in Science. ‘This is a milestone for neutrino science,’ says physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

He makes music, goes to the athletics track twice a week and, according to his supervisor, has done his research so well that it would not be out of place in a PhD research. Physics and astronomy student Hidde Stoffels' undergraduate research on the properties of dark matter is of such high quality…

On 28 October 2016, prospective female students explored the natural sciences at the annual Physics Ladies’ Day. This event, specially for girls in the final two years of high school, was being held for the third time. 'You don't necessarily have to be top of the class.'

Graphene has held a great promise for applications since it was first isolated in 2004. But we still don’t use it in our large-scale technology, because we have no way of producing graphene on an industrial scale. Leiden physicists have now visualized for the first time how atoms behave in between graphene…

On September 12, Michel Orrit received his Spinoza prize in the Royal Theatre in The Hague from OCW Secretary of State Sander Dekker. With the award comes a budget of 2.5 million euro, to be spent freely on scientific research, and the coveted Spinoza statue. Orrit shared the honor with Eveline Crone…

Leiden Physics Poster

A full overview of all loans and debts between banks would help preventing a new financial collapse. But banks do not provide this information. An econophysics model by Diego Garlaschelli and collaborators reconstructs the most probable situation and finishes first place in two independent tests.

Theoretical physicists research a special class of particles; Weyl fermions. They have found them to exhibit paradoxical behavior, in contradiction to a thirty-year old fundamental theory in electromagnetism. A possible application is a new kind of electronics—spintronics. Publication in Physical Review…

For years, the late professor Marten Durieux personally mentored and funded students from Sudan to study physics in the Netherlands. Colleague Sense Jan van der Molen calls his endeavour remarkable: ‘Marten Durieux has done a great job with these students, at a time when diversity was not yet a big…

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…

PhD candidate Ludwig Hoffmann will spend two years at Harvard University in the US thanks to a Rubicon grant he won on April 11. Using theoretical models he studies biological tissues, for example during morphogenesis. This is the process that causes tissue or organisms to develop their shape. ‘This…

‘It's where disciplines intersect that the most exciting scientific questions arise.' This was the message given by John van Noort, Professor of Biophysics, in his inaugural lecture. His own research is at the interface between biology and physics. Inaugural lecture 23 April.

Metamaterials have properties that depend on their shape and architecture. Researchers at AMOLF, Leiden University and Tel Aviv University have found a new way of designing these metamaterials and their properties by deliberately incorporating small errors. They publish their results today in Nature…

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

‘It has never been so easy to set up a Studium Generale series.’ With these words Tilman Grünewald thanked speaker Frank den Hollander, who kicked off the Studium Generale series on complex networks on Monday 20 February.

The seventh Leiden wall formula has been finished. Over the last few weeks, mural artists Ben Walenkamp and Jan Willem Bruins have painted Christiaan Huygens' pendulum formula on 'De Brandmeester' an old drill and hose tower in de Plaatsteeg, just behind the Breestraat in Leiden.

Manufacturers produce high-end technology mostly top-down with large machinery, but small particles are able to build structures by themselves from the bottom up. A major challenge is that these particles easily clump together. Leiden physicist Daniela Kraft has developed a method to use this phenomenon…

Watching and analysing hundreds of TEDx talks, that too can be research. That becomes clear from the work of PhD student Aletta Meinsma, who is studying potential problems in popular communication about quantum technologies. She explains how she approaches this and why it is so important.

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.’

Molecules are extremely hard to see in visible light, especially without using fluorescence. Leiden physicists have now made their optical technique sensitive enough to image the molecules of their interest in all sizes. Publication in Nanoletters.

Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition grants in the Science domain. This is for research into subjects such as immune cells in tumours, antibiotic resistance and magnetic semiconductors.

Rigid materials break more easily than floppy ones. This simple observation allows to predict and control the width of cracks. Theoretical understanding of how materials break is useful in for example the production of cars or screens. Publication in PNAS.

It's pretty hard to spot a single 5 nanometer particle. Leiden physicists pulled it off by turning a 120 nm gold rod into a detector.

‘Microscopy is by far the least understood, most inefficiently operated, and the most abused of all laboratory instruments,’ reads the quote on the office wall of microscopy unit supporters Joost Willemse en Gerda Lamers. It describes exactly why the two developed the microscopy course for starting…

The life of a fibroblast is heavy, but PhD student Julia Eckert makes it 19.5 times heavier, using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at the ESTEC space research centre in Noordwijk.

The fastest chemical reaction in the universe takes place inside our eyes.

The KM3NeT neutrino detector celebrates the installation of the first string of detectors in the Mediterranean Sea off the French coast. It will measure neutrinos’ spooky spontaneous change in flavor. Leiden physicist Dorothea Samtleben is closely involved in the project.

Martin van Hecke and Lennard Kwakernaak (Leiden university and AMOLF) develop a mechanical metamterial that can count to ten in their research.

Tjerk Oosterkamp's group is conducting what is perhaps the coldest research in the world. The researchers have cooled a sensor to below 2 millikelvin - almost as cold as absolute zero. This allows them to make extremely sensitive measurements. PhD candidate Jaimy Plugge helped build the setup: ‘We are…

All kinds of reasons have been put forward for why plants apparently fail to make maximum use of the available light. None of these reasons can explain why after two billion years of evolution they are not black, like industrial photovoltaic solar cells. Are we missing something?

The Fine Mechanical Department's (FMD) new Wardjet A0612 will cut anything using a 4000 bar water jet. This enables the FMD to work faster, more accurately, and to perform more versatile jobs.

Is it possible to measure subtle oscillations caused by dark matter moving through the earth? A Dutch-American physicist team have discovered a new route toward what could be the first-ever measurement of ultralight dark matter. They suspended a microscopic magnet inside a superconducting enclosure,…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 goes to David Thouless, Michael Kosterlitz and Duncan Haldane for theoretical discoveries in the field of topological materials. Haldane spent part of 2008 in Leiden; he is the 14th Lorentz Professor to win a Nobel Prize.

Tic tac toe, but with quantum effects. That makes learning the principles of quantum technology a piece of cake. This is the aim of a new start-up founded by researcher Evert van Nieuwenburg: QuantumPlayed. ‘Quantum is all around us and everyone should be able to learn about it.’

Despite the rain and awful weather, the painting job has been finished within a week. The Van der Waals-state equation is the eighth Leiden wall formula.

Detecting molecules with temperature instead of chemical reactions: that’s what scientists from the Leiden Institute of Physics want to do. They are developing a sensor that utilizes special nanoparticles to keep track of certain molecules. In this way, they can for example see how well new drugs do…

Quantum technologies are in demand worldwide, but until now Leiden students could not specialise in them. The new master’s program QIST (Quantum Information Science and Technology) is going to change that. Researcher and professor Jordi Tura i Brugués: ‘We need to train the next generation of quantum…

The highly successful deep-sea telescope KM3NeT can now expand both its size and scope. Using a new type of microphone for underwater use, the telescope will attempt to detect the sound produced by neutrinos as they travel through the sea. The data collected will also be of great interest to other research…

The worldwide race to the quantum computer is in full swing. This computer can bring about a breakthrough in discovering medicines and new materials. Leiden researchers, together with the TU Delft, are taking part in the race. There is now a dossier online about their work.