Much of the work of Serge Fehr, Professor of Quantum Information Theory, is abstract and theoretical and comprehensible to very few people. But his work helps make the digital world safer so that in future our internet banking will still be problem free, for instance. He will explain more in his inaugural…

A job thanks to COVID—something not many people can claim. But PhD candidate Vera Arntzen can. Over the past four years, she has mapped two crucial characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Thanks to her research, experts can now make well-informed decisions on matters like quarantine duration, which…

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…

How does an embryonic stem cell decide if it becomes a heart cell or a kidney cell? That’s the question computational biologist Maria Mircea studied for her PhD research. She looked at the inside of individual cells to analyse how they change. This is what she discovered.

Lecture

From 1 October onwards, Dennis Claessen and Marcel Schaaf will be the new directors of education of Biology. They will replace Han de Winde. Schaaf will be responsible for the bachelor, while Claessen will mainly focus on the master tracks of Biology. We gave students and the education office the change…

I am a PhD candidate at the IBL in the group of Prof. Ákos T. Kovács, where I study how circadian clocks shape interactions between the beneficial soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, using molecular biology and microscopy approaches.

Lichens enthusiast Sander van Zon was eager to use his knowledge for his internship. He wrote an excellent thesis on lichens’ biodiversity in the city, of which his first scientific publication will appear soon. With it, he is nominated for the Leiden Science Young Talent Award 2022.

Since September 2020, Karline Janmaat has been an associate professor of Cognitive Behavioral Ecology at the Cognitive Psychology Section of the Institute of Psychology and the Institute of Biology at Leiden University and the ARTIS Zoo in Amsterdam.

Göran Sundholm is a Professor of Philosophy of Mathematics and of Logic at the Institute for Philosophy.

Emilie Prast is an assistant professor at the Institute of Education and Child Studies, Leiden University.

Michael Richardson is a British citizen who carries out research in developmental biology. He was appointed in 2000 to the van der Leeuw chair of evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His active research focus is: fundamental developmental biology (the evolutionary…

Leiden and South Africa have long standing historical ties in the field of mathematics. These ties have now been strengthened thanks to an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility (ICM) grant. Four researchers from Pretoria are now visiting Leiden. ‘No matter how good we are at dealing with Teams and…

Lecture

Conference

Meindert H. Lamers is co-director of the Netherlands Center for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) at the Faculty of Science and head of the section Light and Electron Microscopy at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). His research group at the LUMC studies molecular mechanisms of DNA replication and…

Plants are extraordinary biochemists and produce a plethora of valuable specialized metabolites (i.e. natural products), including some of our most important medicines. In my lab we want to understand specialized metabolite biosynthesis on a molecular level to improve cultivated plant systems and advance…

Mathematics can help predict thrombosis. Mathematician Mark Alber has developed models that even aid in suggesting treatments. In the Kloosterman lecture on 27 June, he will explain how this works.

Pieternel Gort is communications officer and PhD coordinator at the Mathematical Institute.

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Pim Overgaauw studied Astronomy at Leiden University. After that, he has held various positions at our university, in the areas of education, information security and project management. In March 2022 Pim started as institute manager of the Mathematical Institute, since May 2024 he is director of operations…

The dark matter of biology: clumps of sugar molecules that, for example, form sugary webs around pathogens. We know very little about them. Wouter Remmerswaal threw all his talent into the challenge – both in the lab and as a modeller – and succeeded. He received his PhD on 12th September.

Graduation Ceremony

Nine students dove into a challenging iGEM project this summer. With their idea, they aim to make antibodies more efficient - and in the meantime learn at least as much about collaboration, creativity and their own future.

‘Wadden Sea Sounds’ is the name of a new project launched by the Waddenvereniging in collaboration with researchers from Leiden University and the University of Groningen. The aim is to find out how underwater noise affects marine life in the Wadden Sea.

With a self-converted red camper van, biologists and twin brothers Kevin and Marvin Groen go on a nature adventure in Eastern Europe. Together, they search for wild animals, beautiful nature and places to sport. From a long search for a bear in the Slovakian wilderness to the discovery that pelicans…