Climate change is a challenge for both current and future generations. New biological resources have to be developed in order to meet the demand for energy as well as the demand for food.

Carbohydrates, alongside proteins and nucleic acids, constitute a crucial and versatile family of biomolecules present in all life forms. They manifest as monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides, covalently bonded to proteins and fats. Carbohydrates are integral to plant and arthropod…

Promotor: J.G.E.M.Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

In Leiden University's video series on Leiden and The Hague as student cities, students interview each other at their favorite spots. In the fifth video of this series, archaeology student Azra spoke with Biology student Floris in Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

The right student in the right place. That is what LIACS programme director Frank Takes and education coordinator Joyce Glerum are aiming to do with the ‘Wisselstroom’ project. By next year, they hope to have a standardised protocol that will make it easier for computer science students to transfer…

Six master students of the Computer Science programme will present their papers on future cities at the NetMob conference in Oxford. The six papers were part of the international Future Cities Challenge and made it to the top 10 of all entries.

How do we know what a quantum computer is good for when it hasn't been built yet? That's what PhD candidate Casper Gyurik investigated by combining two terms you often hear: quantum computing and machine learning.

On September 7, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science participated with a team of six students in the first edition of the Capture the Flag event 'Challenge the Cyber'. They were placed second in this national hacking competition for students.

Computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology CAA95.

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these networks. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of Se…

Hybrid zones occur where two species meet and produce offspring (hybrids). Typically, hybrids show a considerable reduction in fitness. In this thesis two hybrid zones are treated.

Identifying natural plant-associated bacteria that provide targeted inhibition of pathogens through the production of antimicrobial peptides.

Simulating human language understanding on the computer is a great challenge. A way to approach it is to represent natural language meanings in logic, and to use logical provers to determine what does and does not follow from a text. What logic is best to use and how natural language meanings are best…

On a structural level, the properties featured by a majority of mechanical metamaterials can be ascribed to the finite number of soft internal degrees-of freedom allowing for low-energy deformations.

In online games conflicts between players may arise. Novin, Bos, Stevenson and Rieffe investigated factors that may explain why some adolescents react more angrily than others in this type of situation. In their realistically designed gaming environment, the (pre-programmed) fellow player suddenly started…

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.

Please note that the course Molecular Biology for Physics will start on Monday 5 February. Please check the schedules for the time and location!

The cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2R) is associated with several inflammatory diseases with an unmet medical need (e.g. Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, reumatoid arthritis). Development of new chemical biology strategies to study this protein is essential to aid future development of drugs for these…

Learning from nature and utilizing microbial biodiversity to identify and characterize enzymes for degradation and upcycling of plastics and other polymeric materials.

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

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…

Archaeologist Fulco Scherjon has used computer simulations to identify where and how Neanderthals lived in West Europe. What stood out was that they probably had lots of children and lived in smaller groups than was previously thought. PhD defence on 28 May.

How does invasive hybridization affect threatened native species?

This thesis describes the synthesis and biochemical evaluation of a variety of cyclophellitol based activity-based probes and inhibitors targeting various endo- and exo-acting retaining glycosidases. In the last two decades a variety of probes and inhibitors for (hemi)cellulose degrading enzymes have…

Promotor: R. Cramer

Microbial Sciences' contribution to the Host-Microbe Interactions research theme is to investigate how beneficial or disease-causing microbes associate and interact with their host.

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

By comparing individual health data with population data, doctors can provide personalized health advice and patients can learn from each other's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, professor of Applied Data Analytics shows how personal data can have predictive value.

Designing innovative algorithms, thinking outside the box, and brainstorming over coffee with his colleagues — this is what physicist Stefano Polla enjoys most. His success shines through in his nomination for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2024 for PhD thesis of the Year.

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

Computer Science on place 51 in QS World Universities Ranking 2011

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that these changes to the behavior of the immune system are persistent and can continue even after diet is improvedAlmost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not…

The new institute manager of the IBL studied biology for six months, but went in a completely different direction: development cooperation and the financial sector. Three decades later, Resi Janssen is making a radical career switch. Or isn’t she? 'In ten years’ time I want IBL to be in a new, sustainable…

LIACS scholars Thomas Bäck and Hao Wang will be the new Editors-in-Chief of the Evolutionary Computation Journal from November 1. Published by MIT Press since its foundation in 1993, the journal stands as a keystone in the field, providing a global platform for researchers exploring the workings of…

The research presented in this thesis concerns one of the most important questions in software engineering of our time: how can we make sure that software is free from memory safety bugs?