The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

Vedran Dunjko appointed to full professor of quantum computing at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

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.

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

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 STW project Energy Efficient Computer-Brain Interaction (principal investigator for LIACS: dr. T.P. Stefanov) has been granted. Funding for LIACS: 1 PhD student + travel/equipment budget, project duration: 4 years.

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…

On November 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Wessel Kraaij as one of the 2017 Distinguished Members. ACM Distinguished Members have made a significant contribution to the field of computing, computer science or information technology. This year, worldwide 43 scientists received…

With defending his thesis ‘Applications of topology to Weyl semimetals and quantum computing’, the Leiden theoretical physicist Tom O'Brien has gained the rare 'cum laude' qualification. The freshly minted PhD has started a five year research programme on quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, funded…

A major grant for research into machine learning algorithms for quantum computers. With this ERC Consolidator grant, Vedran Dunjko and his colleagues hope to discover which real-world problems a quantum computer can solve faster than a normal one.

An integrated approach of physiological concepts, advanced statistical approaches and large clinical datasets.

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.

In this thesis we explore machine and deep learning approaches that address keychallenges in high dimensional problem areas and also in improving accuracy in wellknown problems. In high dimensional contexts, we have focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

For the first time, a computer can compete with the very best human players in StarCraft II, a video game played by tens of thousands at a professional level and by millions just for fun. Mike Preuss, university lecturer at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) responds to the achievement…

Computer Science on place 51 in QS World Universities Ranking 2011

Computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology CAA95.

Samineh Bagheri is the first PhD candidate to defend her thesis fully remotely.

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…

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.

Quantum hardware comes with a different computing paradigm and new ways to tackle applications. Much effort has to be put into understanding how to leverage this technology to give real-world advantages in areas of interest for industries such as combinatorial optimization or machine learning.

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.

This thesis addresses questions on effectively using variational quantum circuits for machine learning tasks.

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…

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

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.

Uncertainty and noise are frequently-encountered obstacles in real-world applications of numerical optimization. The practice of optimization that deals with uncertainties and noise is commonly referred to as robust optimization.

The first larger quantum computers will soon be available. These computers need new software. Researchers at Leiden University have been awarded a Gravitation grant to develop the necessary software. They will be collaborating with colleagues from other research institutions.

Simon Portegies Zwart, professor of Computational Astrophysics, uses computers to simulate the evolution of stars. We speak with him about his field and about the challenges of working with huge amounts of complex data.

Lecture

Promotor: R. Cramer

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

Physics professor Jan Aarts starts a collaboration with chip manufacturer Intel to perform fundamental research in low-power, cryogenic computing.

Three researchers from Leiden University have received awards in the Quantum Technology programme within the National Growth Fund, organised by NWO in collaboration with Quantum Delta NL. Read more about these three futuristic projects.