Jasper Knoester is de decaan van de Faculteit Wiskunde & Natuurwetenschappen. Hoe gaat het met hem, wat doet hij precies en hoe ziet zijn dag eruit? In elke nieuwsbrief geeft Jasper een inkijkje in zijn leven. Op 7 mei heeft hij een gevarieerd programma voor de boeg.

Want to get fit at work with your team, department or faculty? In its Let’s Move campaign, the University Sports Centre is making exercise at work easy. Staff from the Faculty of Science got the ball rolling before the summer in a successful pilot with yoga, boot camp, boxing and self-defence classe…

Museum De Lakenhal is displaying the smallest work of art in the world: a 3D-printed statue of Rembrandt van Rijn, made by sculptor Jeroen Spijker and researchers from Leiden University.

February 8 saw the launch of the Medical Delta ‘Sustainable Hospitals’ Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab. The research projects will touch on different aspects of healthcare. The students hope they will be able to offer practical solutions to make hospitals greener.

A gold carpet welcomed students, staff and curious locals into Spui Campus on Monday 2 February. The V&D department store has been transformed into a unique open knowledge centre.

Dutch children’s picture books are full of animals, but mainly mammals are portrayed. Especially pets and exotic animals are popular. A large part of the Dutch fauna is less visible, but biologist Michiel Hooykaas of Leiden University sees plenty of opportunities for a more biodiverse book world.

Thursday 15 January starts with a long journey and ends with an equally long working day full of current issues. Jasper visits the Mathematical Institute with the scientific directors of our faculty and attends a meeting on collaboration with the Ministry of defence.

During Consent is Key Week, we’re exploring ways to eliminate sexual violence within our university community. We spoke to Assistant Professor Mischa Dekker, who specialises in gender-related violence, about how to prevent unacceptable behaviour among students and staff.

17 November is all about high tech. From consultations with ASML and a component for the world's largest telescope to our high-tech education. Oh right, and a conversation with the new rector magnificus.

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

How often do you consider the impact of your choices? 10 October is Sustainability Day: a good time to introduce the new bachelor's programme Science for Sustainable Societies.

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.

It was not until 1878 that the first female students enrolled at Leiden University, but the discussion on whether women were suited to study was by no means over. 8 March is International Women's Day. BBC correspondente Kim Ghattas will deliver a lecture on 6 March on the struggle by Arabic women for…

Immigration and naturalisation policies are an important theme in the upcoming Dutch elections. The Netherlands should be mindful of its immigration narrative, says PhD candidate Hannah Bliersbach, as this greatly influences the relationship between ‘new’ citizens and their new home country.

This is a difficult time. Above all, for all those directly involved in this horrible case – unacceptable behaviour by a professor and his removal from the University – the case we went public about on 18 October and that has been reported in the media. This is painful and tough for the complainants…

Whether finding signals of dark matter or discovering hydrogen in the vicinity of exoplanets, Leiden astronomers are world players in their field, and they are part of a long tradition: Leiden was the first university in the world to have its own observatory.

Research

Leiden University has six top bachelor's programmes according to Keuzigids universiteiten 2025, a consumer guide to university programmes. This puts Leiden in fourth place of the broad-based universities.

Research

A sunny call from Fiji, a drenched arrival in Leiden and a day filled with conversations about cancer research, China and inclusion. Such are the turns a day can take — from itchy legs to a well-earned dessert.

Biopharmaceutical sciences master's student Nicole ter Laak has won the KNMP Studentenprijs 2023. She wins the prize for her research project on dosing guidelines of antibiotics in newborn babies with a very low birth weight for gestational age.

The Executive Board proposes to take the decision to suspend the existing institutional student exchange programmes with two Israeli universities, and until further notice not to engage in any new exchange programmes with Israeli universities that have comparable links with the Israeli military (the…

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

Are you looking for a free and transparent way to submit your scientific articles for peer review? Then look no further than Peer Community In (PCI). This platform, which is supported by Leiden University, is a good alternative to publication in traditional peer-reviewed journals.

Three new initiatives will provide a more diverse view of Leiden’s academic history, literally and figuratively: a historical study on the background of students and scientists, a new book about the Academy Building, and two new sculptures of female scientists, Ewine van Dishoek, Professor of Molecular…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life. On March 13, 2026, he is on a knowledge mission to South America.

As the father of a family with four children, he already visited the Hortus regularly. Now Tom Schreuder also comes there for his work. Every day he travels from Lisse by bike. The new Director Operations calls it a ‘perfect match’.

Human resources

With lab tours, presentations and an information fair, Leiden University’s Master’s Open Day gave students a good impression of our master’s programmes and the career prospects that come with them.

The number of students enrolled at Leiden University remained stable this year. As at other Dutch universities, the growth in recent years seems to have levelled off. Leiden University is also following the national trend in terms of intake at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. The number of international…

What should our education and research look like in 2027? How can we make the university more sustainable and achieve greater impact? The new Strategic Plan will set the direction for the coming years, and the Executive Board wants students and staff to provide as much input as possible. Would you…

Leiden University is introducing 15 interfaculty themes to improve its visibility and strategic positioning. These themes can now be found on our website.

She’s not one to seek the spotlight, but when it comes to raising the profile of the service desk, Brigitte Kraakman goes the extra mile, even if it means stepping out of her comfort zone for an interview. As a familiar face behind the Faculty of Science’s service desk, Brigitte is known for her helpfulness…

Getting to know all his colleagues as fast as possible, and learning about the faculty’s strengths: these will be Jasper Knoester’s first challenges. Jasper became the new Dean of the Faculty of Science on 1 January, and he is optimistic about the corona restrictions. ‘Obviously, this isn’t the start…

After nearly five years as President of the Executive Board, Annetje Ottow will be stepping down from the role as of 1 September. During her time as President, she helped shape the university’s strategic direction, strengthening its regional, European and international profile. Sustainability, and dignity…

It’s Saturday and electric minibuses ride back and forth bringing prospective students to Leiden University’s various faculties. They want to see for themselves whether that interesting-looking programme will suit them.

PhD candidate Joeri Schoenmakers works at the LIC and describes how his days revolve around new experiments, oxygen-free reactions and supervising students. The mix of freedom, variety and a close-knit team means he enjoys both his research and his teaching role every single day.

Social

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

A small cat with a big personality has captured the hearts of students and staff at the Faculty of Science. The black-and-white Bobby even has his own Instagram fan account. Who are the people behind Bobby ‘the astrocat’? ‘He helps connecting people on campus.’

Egyptologist Marleen De Meyer has been appointed the new Director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC). Dr De Meyer has worked for the institute, which promotes Egyptian, Dutch and Flemish collaboration in the field of education and research, since 2016.

Presentations, city tours, themed cafés and information fairs − there was plenty to discover on the Bachelor’s Open Day last Saturday. Around 6,000 prospective students and 4,000 parents visited faculties in Leiden and The Hague to soak up the atmosphere and imagine how it would be to study at Leiden…

Ernst Kuipers, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, announced on 13 February that he plans to remove children’s heart surgery from the Centre for Congenital Heart Defects Amsterdam - Leiden (CAHAL). He wants to concentrate this highly specialised care for children with congenital heart defects in…