A new executive board has been installed at NeCEN, a state-of-the art facility that offers the most advanced cryo-electron microscopes worldwide. The new board members are full of excitement: what are their ideas for the future of the facility?

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

Physicist Sense Jan van der Molen researches materials that do not exist in nature. ‘It’s fascinating to see how the properties of a material change if we manage to make it super thin.’ He will give his inaugural lecture on 21 October.

Research groups in the Biological & Soft Matter Programme unravel mechanisms in biological processes and develop novel bio-inspired soft materials.

PhD defence

This dissertation revolves around the design and implementation of novel instrumentation and related measurement techniques, at the single molecule level, for use in biophysical research. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the field of fluorescence-based single molecule measurements. In particular,…

In this thesis, we study systems of electrons in which strong correlations give rise to emergent exotic physics.

Last Monday April 18, Bram Koster (professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), professor at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC)) and Ariane Briegel (professor at the IBL) gave a presentation to the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink. The presentation took place at NeCEN, the open access…

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.

Promotor: B. van de Water

Promotor: B. van de Water

Leiden physicists found a surprising interaction between electrons and a resist layer. The resist appears to charge and discharge due to incoming electrons. Publication in Physical Review Letters.

The Phase 3 clinical trial results of the promising Covid-19 vaccine of Johnson & Johnson are expected this month. The Dutch electron microscopy facility NeCEN helped develop the company’s vaccine, and they have now published their scientific findings in Nature Communications.

Advanced microscopy to understand life and fight disease: that’s the goal of the new NL-BioImaging network that will develop and integrate state-of-the-art microscopy technologies and services. Researchers from all Dutch universities, including Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre,…

From surface science towards industrial practice using high-pressure scanning tunneling microscopy.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens and worldwide pandemics are increasing, making infectious diseases more prevalent. To develop new treatments, deeper knowledge of the interaction between bacteria and human cells is required. Ariane Briegel recently became a Medical Delta professor and studies such path…

‘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 symposium is open to all registered participants and consists of a one-day programme and a poster session.

Research groups in the Quantum Matter & Optics programme investigate electronic properties of matter and light-matter interactions with emphasis on quantum information.

Graphene and other layered materials combine into completely new substances. Leiden physicists establish the ground rules for designing such materials by measuring how the layers in the stack interact. Publication on November 29 in Nature Communications.

Microscopic insight on lipid-based nanomedicine in vivo remains limited to the perception of the knowledge that could be obtained: if we interpret only what we see, then we only believe to know. Although believing to know encapsulates an undefined amount of uncertainty in the exploration of lipid-based…

Due to the corona crisis, they had to switch to online education halfway during their course: associate professor Marcel Schaaf and PhD candidate Michiel Hooykaas of the Institute of Biology Leiden talk about digital practicals, online lectures and their biggest obstacle: exams.

Researchers need to work in specialized environments when they work with dangerous bacteria and viruses. These microbes spread easily, so only in labs with a high biosafety levels they can be studied. Unfortunately, to look at the microbes properly, expensive microscopes are needed that are not always…

On 3 and 4 June 2015 a delegation from the biotechnology and biomedicine center in Prague (BIOCEV) visited the Faculty of Science in Leiden, as well as the Netherlands Centre for Electron Microscopy (NeCEN). The delegation was interested to see the potential for collaboration in the field of cryo transmission…

This dissertation derives from the development of tools for algorithmic composition which extract pitch materials from sound signals, analyzing them according to their timbral and harmonic properties, putting them into motion through diverse rhythmic and textural procedures.

PhD defence

PNAS publication on protein encounter complexes

This thesis investigates reactive interfaces in surface science across three domains: heterogeneous catalysis, environmental nanoplastics, and two-dimensional materials.

Despite the fact that gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are one of the most studied nanoparticles, there is still a necessity for new approaches allowing for effective protective coating to enable wider use of GNPs in biomedical applications.

Freezing bacteria super fast to gain a true-to-nature image of the internal and external structure. Ariane Briegel Professor of Ultrastructural Biology came to Leiden specially to carry out this research. Leiden University is one of the few institutes in the world to have the necessary equipment. Inaugural…

In our lab, we investigate the physics and material properties of low-dimensional systems.

On this page you can find the current vacancies at the Van der Molen research group.

In this thesis, the focus lies on studying glucocorticoid receptor dynamics in living cells with the aim of understanding how this transcription factor finds its DNA target sites to regulate transcription.

The Joan van der Waals colloquium is an ongoing bi-weekly lecture series.

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

Ariane Briegel has been appointed Professor in the fìeld of Ultrastructural Biology within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology from the 1st of December 2015. Her expertise is in using electron cryotomography to study how microbes sense and respond to their environment.

Stacked layers of graphene can act like a mirror for beams of electrons. Physicists Daniël Geelen and colleagues discovered this using a new type of electron microscope. In an article in Physical Review Letters, they describe their results, which could lead to the development of optics for electron…

The High Troughput Microscopy Dutch Flagship Node that includes the Leiden Cell Observatory Screening platform is now officially ratified as a Euro-BioImaging (EuBI) Node Candidate

Chinese universities have big ambitions to be among the leading international higher education institutions. What does this mean in terms of opportunities for researchers at the universities of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam? Staff at the universities recently discussed the issue.

‘Working in Leiden is a dream come true.’ Ákos Kovács studied in his birth country Hungary and worked in Germany, Denmark and Groningen. As professor of Microbiome Ecology at IBL, he immediately started working together with his new colleagues to make discoveries about the versatile bacterial species…

In this dissertation, we work towards an experiment in which we aim to bring a micrometer sized magnet at the tip of a soft cantilever into a superposition.

The master’s specialisation Research in Physics, Quantum Matter and Optics at Leiden University offers a thorough experience on the front line of physics research with a practical training of communicative and computer skills. The programme focuses on Condensed Matter problems, such as Molecular Electronics,…

Macromolecular Biochemistry is a section of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry at Leiden University, comprising the PIs Marcellus Ubbink, Remus Dame, Lars Jeuken, Anne Wentink, Sebastian Geibel, Anjali Pandit, René Olsthoorn, Alia, and Steffen Brünle.

The Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) is the basis for research and collaborations of the Leiden chemistry groups. Chemistry is the central science enabling a healthy future in a sustainable society. Chemistry researchers at Leiden University take a fundamental approach in finding tailored solutions…

There is an urgent need for more physiologically relevant cell culture methods to guide compound selection in pre-clinical stages of the drug development pipeline.

This thesis focuses on using liposomes in two different treatment strategies; vaccination (or immunotherapy) and delivery of a small molecule, and in two different disease models; cancer and atherosclerosis.

By detecting the tiny forces between a micrometer sized magnet and the spins of hydrogen nuclei, we can do MRI with a volume resolution that is approximately 12 orders of magnitude better than a conventional MRI.