Mashaghi lab conducts research at the interface of physics, engineering and biomedicine. We develop and use theoretical and experimental approaches to address basic and applied research problems.

The Psychology Research Seminars are organised by and for institute staff. They offer an opportunity to share knowledge, gain new insights, and meet colleagues from various disciplines.

Xinrong Ma defended her thesis on 13 February 2018

On Friday 7 March 2025 Adam Knight successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This thesis consists of two main parts. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3) deals with a class of Markov process called Quasi-Skipfree (QSF) processes.

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?

In December 2024, the book Redressing Fundamental Rights Violations by the EU: The Promise of the ‘Complete System of Remedies', edited by Melanie Fink, was published fully open access with Cambridge University Press. The EU prides itself on having created a legal system that puts the individual at…

Researchers at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Radboud university medical center have been given the green light to deliberately infect volunteers with malaria in order to test a highly promising vaccine on them.

Specific fatty acid-sugar molecules allow leprosy bacteria, among others, to hide from our immune system. How exactly is not entirely clear. Hessel van Dijk, who received his PhD on 13 October, replicated the molecules, helping to solve a piece of the puzzle. Van Dijk's dissertation is titled: Synthesis…

Growth and development affect the metabolism of drugs administered to neonates, infants, and children.

This is the first special issue of any organisation studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this Introduction, we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an…

The focus of this thesis is how stars like our Sun and planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth are formed.

Analysis of drug adversity

The upscaling of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data is recognized as one of the main challenges in the ex-ante LCA of emerging technologies. This challenge arises since industrial-scale system specifications for these technologies are unknown and industrial data is lacking.

Students with learning problems experience difficulties in reading, writing, and content-area learning into and throughout their secondary-school years

Using artificial intelligence is more complicated for the government than for companies. Bram Klievink, Professor of Public Administration, aims to identify the problems and find solutions.

Researchers at the Faculty of Science work at the frontiers of knowledge every day, tackling today’s major societal challenges. Their work is recognised through grants, prizes and other awards. We highlight some of these achievements below.

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel

Two excellent young chemists, Jeroen Codée and Sander van Kasteren, have received an ECHO grant for €260,000 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This funding will allow them to begin their research projects.

Maria Yazdanbakhsh, Professor of Parasitology at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros. She will investigate why people in Africa and Southeast Asia respond less to certain vaccines than Europeans. Her goal is to find a solution for…

Dissolving microneedles are a subgroup of microneedle types that completely dissolve within the skin. During this dissolving process the vaccine, stored in the needle matrix, is released into the skin.

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).

Homicide engenders broad moral concerns in society, and its aftermath can be understood as a barometer for criminal justice policy. Of all homicides committed, however, only some lead to arrest, to prosecution and ultimately to conviction in court.

Grasseni's contribution to this special feature on food cultures, food systems, and agriculture in Europe builds upon her ongoing project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale.

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.

Pectin is a plant cell wall polysaccharide made of mainly D-galacturonic acid (GA) subunits. The potency of the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger to naturally secrete high amounts of pectinases to degrade pectin has been utilized for the industrial production of pectinases.

Chemical biology research at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry is aimed at understanding biological processes at the molecular level to strengthen the knowledge base of human health and disease. The approach to achieve this goal is a fundamental chemical one; with the aid of chemical probes biological…

In this research line, the role pharmacological agents and neurochemcial processes play in behavior and cognition is examined with a particular focus on pain, placebo and nocebo effects and intensive care treatments.

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process. Leiden University, the LUMC and other partners will implement this new way…

Despite substantial progress in understanding tuberculosis (TB), the eradication of the TB epidemic is still far from reach.

The polypept(o)ide hybrid material attracted more and more attention over the past decade by combining the multifunctional characteristics of polypeptides with the shielding characteristics of polypeptoid-pSar possessing similar properties as a shielding material as polvethylene glycol(PEG). Polysarcosine…

The Department of Medical Microbiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is researching antiviral drugs that could treat and prevent SARS-CoV-2 in various projects. One part of the PanCoroNed project is being led by Martijn van Hemert and involves lab tests into the antiviral effect of molecules…

Multicellular giant algae Chara species have been widely used in physiological studies for decades.

Lodewijk Petram, author of the book 'The World's First Stock Exchange', discussed the rise of the Amsterdam stock exchange in the 17th century in the ninth Hazelhoff Guest Lecture.

The lack of success of new CNS drugs in clinical development is in part due to the complexity of the CNS, unexpected side effects, difficulties for drugs to penetrate the brain, but also by the lack of biomarkers.

When we are in a conversation, how do we know exactly when to respond, and how do we manage to respond so swiftly, yet without interrupting our interlocutors? Can speech melody – in particular utterance final “boundary tones” – help us determine who will speak next, or are these cues too late in the…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof

Think tanks have proliferated in most Western democracies over the past three decades and are often considered to be increasingly important actors in public policy. Still, their precise contribution to public policy remains contested.

The predication of the effect (efficiency and toxicity) of a drug in a patient is very important in (i) clinical decision support and (ii) the development of novel drug treatments.

A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a biologically inspired algorithm, highly capable at processing images and videos.

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.J. Knibbe, Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Prof.dr. K. Allegaert (Leuven)

The major aim is to examine the potential of learning the body to produce a similar physiological (autonomic, neuroendocrine, or immune) and physical (e.g., desensitization of persistent physical symptoms) response to placebo medication than to active medication (pharmacological conditioning). If proven…

Promotor: Prof.dr. L.J. Slikkerveer

Leiden researchers have developed a groundbreaking model to advance cancer immunotherapy. Using a 3D printer, they create mini-tumors within an environment that closely mimics human tissue. They have also developed a method to monitor real-time interactions of these mini-tumours with immune cells during…

How do plant defense genes get activated?