On 10 February 2025, Melanie Fink presented her recently awarded NWO Veni project at Leiden University’s SAILS Lunch Time-seminars.

Book project on how European policy is made and implemented, with a focus on how that process can be understood and lead to policy change.

Friday afternoon, 1 October. Location: one of the most vibration-free places in the world. In this setting, Leiden top scientists launched Quantum Leiden. For decades, researchers at the Faculty of Science have been investigating quantum technology at the highest level and also have been brainstorming…

best phd theses of the faculty of science Leiden - physics, chemistry, computer science, biopharmaceutical sciences, biology, industrial ecology, environmental sciences, astronomy, mathematics

Thanks to data science, we can chart and search enormous quantities of related information. This generates all kinds of new insights, for example in complex global financial structures or such societal problems as loneliness.

Four promising young researchers from Leiden University have received a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant will enable them to gain valuable research experience at top universities abroad.

How to explain the apparent high success rates of the EU infringement procedures, which are the major tools for enforcing EU law, against the member states?

How can we make the information in handwritten historical research reports accessible and searchable? Data scientists at Leiden University are working with other universities on a method that will improve access to cultural heritage.

At Leiden University, researchers from all disciplines work together to find answers and design innovations in the field of artificial intelligence.

The research programme Probability Theory focuses on probability theory and on operations research.

Edward Elgar

best phd theses of the faculty of science Leiden - physics, chemistry, computer science, biopharmaceutical sciences, biology, industrial ecology, environmental sciences, astronomy, mathematics. thesis

Many researchers of the Faculty of Science are members of a research school related to their area of expertise. Research schools aim at collaboration of researchers from different faculties in the same university (interfaculty schools) or in different universities (interuniversity schools).

Optimization tasks in practice have multifaceted challenges as they are often black box, subject to multiple equality and inequality constraints and expensive to evaluate.

Promotor: Prof.dr. S.F. Portegies Zwart, Co-promotor: D.C. Heggie

Promotor: Prof.dr. K.J. Batenburg

The unit residue group, to which the present thesis is devoted, is defined using the norm-residue symbol, which Hilbert introduced into algebraic number theory in 1897.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) of Leiden University proudly establishes the Blaise Pascal chair. The chair applies for one year and is meant to strengthen the cooperation of the Leiden computer science research with foreign institutes.

The two-year Foundations of Computing programme (120 EC) includes mandatory core courses and electives, as well as a Master's Thesis Research Project.

The Supramolecular & Biomaterials Chemistry group comprises the PIs Alexander Kros, Roxanne Kieltyka, Gregory Schneider and Sander Wezenberg, and is active in the field of self-assembly of amphiphilic peptides and applying them in supramolecular chemistry.

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.

Implementation of the new sound synthesis and analysis method in music composition.

The Divide & Quantum (D&Q) project offers various solutions to harness the power of quantum computers in the near term, proposing entire pipelines, from theoretical research, via implementation to real-world case studies in a number of disciplines, to science communication with the broader society.…

Promotores: C. J. ten Cate; M. A. Ainslie. Co-promotor: W. Slabbekoorn

Sewer pipes are an essential infrastructure in modern society and their proper operation is important for public health. To keep sewer pipes operational as much as possible, periodical inspections for defects are performed.

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a maintenance policy that uses the past, current, and prognosticated health condition of an asset to predict when timely maintenance should occur.

In this article, Barrie Sander together with his colleagues explore whether fairness in digital governance inadvertently entrenches structural inequalities

Promotor: F. Arbab

Quantifying physical activity (using accelerometers) and combining the frequency and intensity of activities with health data (brain MRI, traditional clinical parameters and metabolomics) is of utmost importance to monitor mobility and health among older individuals and study health promotion during…

The next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments on space-based observatories requires sophisticated wavefront sensing and control in addition to a high-performance coronagraph.

By training with virtual opponents known as computer generated forces (CGFs), trainee fighter pilots can build the experience necessary for air combat operations, at a fraction of the cost of training with real aircraft.

A common method to solve expensive function evaluation problem is using Bayesian Global Optimization, instead of Evolutionary Algorithms.

With the help of quantum mechanics, digital quantum hardware may be able to tackle some of the problems that are too difficult for ordinary computers. But despite these expectations and the ongoing effort of the research community, reliable quantum computers are not yet realized in a lab setting.

This interdisciplinary research project explores several adaptive machine learning methods which can give insight into the interaction between human and machine. The ultimate goal is open and natural communication between humans and AI that should result in mutual trust, cooperation and coordination…

In this thesis we will explore the use of fuzzy systems theory for applications in bioinformatics.

The two-year Data Science: Computer Science programme consists of 120 European Credit Transfer System (EC) points and includes courses and electives as well as a Master's Thesis Research Project.

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

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

In 2018, the number of mobile phone users will reach about 4.9 billion. Assuming an average of 5 photos taken per day using the built-in cameras would result in about 9 trillion photos annually.

In this thesis, we use low-frequency and high-frequency radio observations to address the following questions regarding quasars: is the radio loud/quiet quasar dichotomy real?

The quantum nature of matter and light has grown into a broad and fruitful research field for theorists and experimentalists alike. It combines foundational research with toward applications, the most well known of which is the quantum computer.

Humans perceive the real world through their sensory organs: vision, taste, hearing, smell, and touch. In terms of information, we consider these different modesalso referred to as different channels of information or modals.

The specialisation combines one year of Computer Science research (60 – 80 EC) with one year of science communication courses, internships and research (40-60 EC).

Promotor: Prof.dr. V. Icke, Co-Promotor: T.I. Madura

The two-year Artificial Intelligence programme (120 EC) includes mandatory core courses and electives, as well as a Master's Thesis Research Project.

The research of the Algebra, Geometry and Number Theory cluster tries to bridge the gap between abstract theory and the world of algorithms and applications.

Systems are called real-time systems, if the correctness of the system does not only depend on the correctness of the system output but also on whether the output is delivered on time.

This article explores how the meaning of the rule of law has evolved over the past century in UK and US parliamentary speeches, focusing on procedural (thin) and substantive (thick) conceptualisations.

Are you eager to bring your own questions and curiosity into scientific research? Do you question intelligence and technology in a fundamental, creative, and playful way? Could you be a researcher who challenges scientific practice and pushes its boundaries?

The two-year Bioinformatics programme (120 EC) includes mandatory core courses and electives, as well as a Master's Thesis Research Project. PLEASE NOTE: The specialisation Bioinformatics will no longer accept new students after February 2026. If you're starting date is September 2026 or later, we…