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.

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

The Night of Discoveries will take place on 20 September in the area around Hortus botanicus Leiden, the Old Observatory, Pieterkserk, the Academy Building, Old School, the Faculty Club and the PJ Veth Building.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

Grants awarded to molecular physiology research

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery…

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

Over a seven year period an international team of scientists has mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope. From Leiden, Astronomer Timothy Shimwell and Huub Röttgering, among others, are involved. It reveals an astonishingly…

Archaeologists from the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden), the Museo Egizio (Turin, Italy) and Leiden University have found the grave of Panehsy, the 'steward of the temple of (the god) Amun', in Saqqara.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

Research in the Lars Jeuken group focusses on redox-active proteins and membranes enzymes, aiming to understand bacterial respiration at the molecular level for the development of antimicrobials and semi-artificial photo-synthetic cells.

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, Co-promotor: M. van der Stelt

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

Promotor: A. Achúcarro Co-promotor: A. Boyarsky

The lysosomal β-glucosidase named glucocerebrosidase (GCase) is a retaining β-glucosidase that hydrolyzes the glycosphingolipid glucosylceramide (GlcCer) to ceramide and glucose at acid pH.

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-Promotores: T. Reijmers, L. Coulier

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

The chemical and structural heterogeneity of toxoid vaccines makes their analysis challenging. However, detailed insights on a molecular level can be obtained by mass spectrometry.

Advanced mass spectrometry of glycosphingolipids takes the central stage in this thesis. Investigations focus on characterization of glycosphingolipid metabolism in health and disease with emphasis to the detection and accurate quantitation of known and so far unknown glycosphingolipids and closely…

Autophagy is a fundamental degradative process, maintaining cellular homeostasis and functions in host defense against intracellular pathogens, including mycobacteria and Salmonella.

Materials with strongly correlated electrons show some of the most mysterious and exotic phases of quantum matter, such as unconventional superconductivity, quantum criticality and strange metal phase.

This thesis explores the theoretical and observational properties of distant massive galaxies that harbour active black holes in their centres and shine brightly at radio wavelengths.

Despite being the object of intense study, embryonic development has been difficult to model due to a number of reasons. First, complex tissues can be comprised of many cell types, of which we probably only know a subset.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Schmidt, Co-promotor: Dr. ir. S. J.T. van Noort

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

Scientists, including our faculty colleague Dr. Mike Field, studying an exceptionally well-preserved woolly rhinoceros have revealed details of what Britain's environment was like 42,000 years ago. The beast's remains were discovered in Staffordshire in 2002, buried alongside other preserved organisms…

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

How does the evolution of the archaeological landscape at Son Sard reveal rural settlement patterns on Mallorca, serving as a pars pro toto for Balearic rural archaeology?