As a prelude to the Night of Discoveries, an Afternoon of Discoveries will be held in Leiden on 21 September for children from the age of eight. Researchers will tell exciting tales and the children will get to do experiments.

Koos Biesmeijer, Professor of Natural Capital, and Claire van Megen, an Educational and Child Studies student, are in with a chance of winning Leiden’s Person of the Year title.

2023 was another year full of highlights and special moments for the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. Find out what the year was like in this year overview: we take you through the most important moments and news items month of each month.

Over the past decade, several novel types of spatially resolved

Promotor: A.P.IJzerman Co-promotor: A. Bender

Supervisor: Lizi Xia

The main aim of this thesis was to unravel the signaling and regulatory networks that drive tumor cell migration during breast cancer metastasis.

Patients share valuable advice and experiences with their peers in online patient discussion groups.

This thesis describes the design and development of subunit‐selective inhibitors of particular catalytically active subunits of human constitutive proteasomes and immunoproteasomes.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-promotor: R.J. Vreeken

PhD defence

Hospital pharmacist and lecturer on the master’s programme in pharmacy Arianna Pranger has made it to the final of the Lecturer of the Year 2021 competition. Outgoing minister Van Engelshoven (Education, Culture and Science) will award the prize to the winning lecturer.

The Saalian archaeological record at Maastricht-Belvédère (the Netherlands).

We started this year as we ended it in 2021: in a lockdown. But the world continues to open up. We are occasionally allowed to go into the office and students are able to return to Campus. Continue reading to find out what the rest of the year has been like.

The Faculty of Science grants two C.J. Kok awards each year: the C.J. Kok Public Award, also known as the award for the ‘Discoverer of the Year’, and the C.J. Kok Jury Award, the award for the best PhD thesis from the past year.

What do a novel anti-ageing ingredient for cosmetics and a new type of chicken feed have in common? They were both produced using a new solvent developed by Leiden biologists in 2011. The medium is neither solid nor liquid, and the industry is now starting to see it’s many possibilities.

2024 was a remarkable and eventful year for the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. In this year overview, we look back month by month at the key events and developments.

Ayo Adedokun, Assistant Professor at Leiden University College (LUC) in The Hague, is one of the four finalists in the running for the title ‘Teacher of the Year 2022’. The yearly election is organized by the Interstedelijk Student Overleg, the largest national student organization in the Netherlands,…

A European consortium has provided a disruptive technological breakthrough to allow the discovery and characterization of novel enzymes for industrial biotechnology. The technology will open the way to more efficient industrial processes such as in the biofuel, animal feed and paper and pulp industr…

The Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems (CEEDs) consortium developed novel integrated technologies that support experiencing, analysing and understanding of very large datasets.

The molecule calix[4]pyrrole, synthesised in the group of associate professor Sander Wezenberg at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, has been voted ‘Molecule of the Year’ by the readers of C2W Mens & Molecule. Wezenberg received the award from editor Daniël Linzel.

Irene Battisti is the discoverer of the year 2019. The physicist won the C.J. Kok Public Award for her research into microscopy and superconductors.

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

Archaeological finds off the coast of Java, Indonesia provide insight into the world of Homo erectus, 140,000 years ago. Skull fragments and other fossil remains provide a unique picture of how and where these early humans lived, says Leiden archaeologist Harold Berghuis.

Some of the most significant and surprising astronomical breakthroughs that have shaped science, technology and culture over the last century are showcased in the Above and Beyond open-source exhibition. This exhibition was commissioned within the framework of the International Astronomical Union's…

Discover budding creators, artists and researchers at the Night of Discoveries art and knowledge festival. And many researchers from Leiden University are taking part.

The Minor Computational Approaches to Disease, Signaling and Drug Targets (CADSDT) is focused on fundamental scientific research required for discovery of new drug targets and development of new drugs.

2021 was an eventful year once again for the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). Hybrid, working from home, online education, on-campus education, face masks, self-tests, keeping distance, quarantine and the coronavirus. Words that have now become a standard part of our vocabulary when…

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Prof.dr. J.C.T. Eijkel (Twente University)

The ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance combined with the low discovery of novel antibiotics is a serious threat to our health care.

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

The increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics necessitates the discovery of new medicines.

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.

In this thesis new methodologies are developed for the detection and systematic study of radio sources in the early universe. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, the activity of supermassive black holes, and the final phase transition of our universe:…

Since 2019, the Foundation for Austrian Studies organises an annual lecture in cooperation with the Institute for History.

Research report January 2020. Supported by the lectorate ‘Music, Education and Society’, research group ‘Making in Music’, Royal Conservatoire The Hague

Antibiotics are a class of medicine most people take for granted. But pathogenic bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to our antibiotics, and this poses a great challenge for future treatments. There is thus a great societal need to identify new molecules that can address new targets and be…

On this page, you will find the recordings of the Tuesday Talks since April 2025. Recordings of the precursor to the Tuesday Talks, This Week’s Discoveries, are also available here.

PhD defence

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.

On this page the programme and sessions can be found.

The application of compliance archaeology techniques such as mechanical large scale excavations where large quantities of data are gathered in relatively little time (and relatively inexpensively) and a firm post-excavation research phase yielded a whole new body of archaeological evidence.

It was the Night of Discoveries on Saturday 16 September: a summer encounter between art and science. Leiden researchers from various disciplines inspired the public with their quest to understand our world.

Every person on earth can read another person’s mind. Not in the way psychics or witches do, but by putting themselves in the shoes of others and considering how they perceive the world. This kind of empathy greatly facilitates communication and interaction. Max van Duijn studies this phenomenon to…

What does Leiden physicist Wolfgang Löffler think about the award of the Nobel Prize for physics to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland?

Leiden was ‘European City of Science’ in 2022. Leiden University looks back on a fantastic year with activities, lectures and workshops full of science and curiosity.