Benjamin Marius Telders, professor of international law, died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen on 6 April 1945. He was an example of civil courage before and during the occupation. He spoke up against inequity and injustice.

How do secondary school teachers’ professional learning preferences relate to teaching experience and the school context?

This thesis investigates the contribution of quantum computers to machine learning, a field called Quantum Machine Learning. Quantum Machine Learning promises innovative perspectives and methods for solving complex problems in machine learning, leveraging the unique capabilities of quantum computers…

Emeritus Professor Ben Lugtenberg received ‘The Arima Award for Applied Microbiology’ from the IUMS (International Union of Microbial Societies) for his life-time contributions to this field.

Ben Wielstra studies hybrid zones, regions in which distinct populations of organisms meet, mate and produce genetically admixed offspring. In the journal Current Biology, he introduces hybrid zones in an accessible way.

Ben Wielstra studies balanced lethal systems, in which half of the offspring die before birth. In the journal Current Biology, he explains in an accessible way how such a disadvantage can originate in nature.

In this dissertation (titled: Exploring the Synergies between Transfer in Reinforcement Learning and Procedural Content Generation) we explore how the two research fields named in the title, namely Transfer in Reinforcement Learning (TRL) and Procedural Content Generation (PCG) can synergize togethe…

Promotor: J. N. Kok, Co-promotor: A. J. Knobbe

The Ben Pauw thesis prize for the best Master’s thesis in the area of Public Affairs was won by student Esther Mangelsdorf of the Institute of Public Administration.

On 12 September 2025, Dr. Ben Van Rompuy participated in the conference “Playing by the Rules: the Intersection of Competition Law and Sports”, organised by the University of Lausanne.

Music profession requires strong reflective, collaborative, creative and improvisational skills, yet prevailing one-to-one tuition in conservatoire education focuses mainly on transmission of craft skills. Examining effects of students' collaborative and experiential learning, as in learning labs, creates…

With the dramatic growth of the image data on the web, there is an increasing demand of the algorithms capable of understanding the visual information automatically.

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The invention of neural networks marks a critical milestone in the pursuit of true artificial intelligence. Despite their impressive performance on various tasks, these networks face limitations in learning efficiently as they are often trained from scratch.

Exploring the application of data-driven AI optimizations, this work leverages past software performance to reduce the carbon footprint and energy consumption of powerful computing applications.

This dissertation advances automated negotiation by developing agents that can learn and adapt across diverse negotiation settings through three increasingly sophisticated approaches: automated algorithm configuration, portfolio-based strategy selection, and end-to-end reinforcement learning with graph…

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The aim of this study was to provide insight into how teachers in higher education can be supported in the design, implementation and evaluation of group assignments by developing a theoretical and evidence-based framework for the design of group assignments.

This thesis mainly focuses on multimodal understanding and Visual Question Answering (VQA) via deep learning methods. For technical contributions, this thesis first focuses on improving multimodal fusion schemes via multi-stage vision-language interactions.

The aim of this thesis was to examine what teachers want to learn themselves. The main research question was: what, how and why teachers want to learn? And does this depend on their years of teaching experience and the school at which they work?

This thesis mainly focuses on cross-modal retrieval and single-modal image retrieval via deep learning methods, i.e. by using deep convolutional neural networks.

Heightened activation of the striatum that adolescents show in response to reward is often associated with risk-taking and negative health consequences. This article in Nature Communications investigates a potential positive side of this heightened activation. It shows that the activity peak in late…

The Reinforcement Learning lab conducts research into Reinforcement Learning and Intelligent Combinatorial Algorithms.

The programme is also offered in a blended learning version: this is a combination of distance learning and face-to-face learning. Read more information

At two recent events, Ben Van Rompuy, Assistant Professor of competition law at the Europa Institute in Leiden, discussed current developments in the application of EU competition rules to regulatory aspects of sport.

Computers are capable of making incredibly accurate predictions on the basis of machine learning. In other words, these computers can learn without intervention once they have been pre-programmed by humans. At LIACS, we explore and push the borders of what a revolutionary new generation of algorithms…