By making two final network connections and entering a command, Martijn Ridderbos (Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board) , Geert de Snoo (Dean of the Faculty of Science) and Bart Hoogervorst (Head of Department Operations ICT Shared Service Centre) ceremonially booted up the university’s latest supercomputer,…

Everything around us is in motion. Students, the University, technology, society, the labour market and the world. These developments provide an impetus to experiment with new forms of education. This article samples a small selection of the many dozens of innovative educational projects. What is striking…

A unique multicenter study, including about 3,500 youth between 10 and 25 years old from across the globe, shows that artificial intelligence - specifically machine learning - is able to identify individuals with anxiety disorders based on their unique brain structure.

The recently promoted Hao Wang from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science teaches computer programmes how to solve real-world problems. His goal is to make the process of problem-solving more efficient. On 1 November, he obtained his doctorate with the predicate cum laude. ‘I hope to solve…

A Leiden-Delft-Erasmus research team has been awarded a LDE Global Support Grant to develop reusable algorithms in the remote detection of non-orthogonal architectural features, taking place in the archaeological context of the northern extremities of the Andean, part of the Istmo-Colombian Area.

Space telescope Euclid is capable of unravelling the secrets of the universe. That is what the images published by ESA today show, according to astronomers working with the telescope's data. The images exceed all expectations. Scientists within the Euclid consortium, including astronomers Henk Hoekstra…

During the opening of the academic year, true to tradition the LUC Teaching Prize will be awarded to the best lecture at the University. Get to know the nominees. This week: Christine Espin.

The Senior Teaching Qualification is for experienced lecturers who have done more than lecturing alone. Ten quotes from the first ten lecturers to receive the STQ award.

André Leliveld has won a grant of 100,000 euros within the Comenius Senior Fellow programme for the project ‘Learning globally, acting locally: co-creation of an international multidisciplinary online learning environment around Frugal Innovation'. André is academic coordinator of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus…

Europe's latest quantum computer is set to arrive in the Netherlands. The Dutch IT cooperative, SURF, which supports education and research institutions, has secured funding from the European EuroHPC programme to make this possible. Researchers from Leiden University will play a key role in the project,…

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…

How do we deal with large sources of greenhouse gases? Do schools provide a socially-inclusive environment for all children? And how can we protect Earth’s nature? These questions have two things in common: they are complex global challenges, and data can help answer them. Mitra Baratchi is computer…

Thanks to Ian Cook’s ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ MOOC, thousands of students have researched where their clothes come from. How does this geographer from the University of Exeter manage to inspire such enthusiasm in his students? He and his student Zahra Ali will explain all during the Education Festival…

History lecturer Giles Scott-Smith is enthusiastic about the new pitch-to-peer programme (P2P), for which students have to make an original, creative assignment and evaluate one another’s work. This is part five in a series of articles about lecturers and innovation in teaching and learning.

In the Netherlands approximately 130 out of 700 secondary schools offer a bilingual stream. However, research about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is limited. With her dissertation Evelyn van Kampen (PhD student at ICLON) wants to contribute to the understanding of the nature and range…

A number of calls for proposals have been launched to finance innovative educational projects. An overview is given below.

PhD defence

Over the past year, many of our staff and students have won prizes, been awarded a substantial grant or been appointed to an academic association or a position in public life. All of these are good reasons to include them in our 2019 Hall of Fame. We are proud of them all.

PhD defence

When you want to analyse big quantities of archaeological data, you run into the issue that searching through excavation reports is extremely time-consuming. If only there existed a search engine specifically focused on querying these reports… But wait, work on an archaeological search engine focused…

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.

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Ruben van Gaalen used a very unique approach for a course of the research master Colonial and Global History: instead of writing an essay, he went to Dublin and made a documentary about African rappers in Ireland.

Even with state-of-the-art technology, it is almost impossible to see: a cosmic neutrino. Yet scientists have managed to image this particle with a deep-sea telescope. And that could help to better understand our universe. Leiden particle physicists collaborated on this ambitious project, published…

Research on quantum computers and Islamic charities: two Leiden researchers have received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.

PhD defence

PhD defence

How small steps can lead to big change: that was the theme of the Leiden Education Festival. Students and lecturers came to Scheltema on 9 May to share their experiences of educational innovation.

In a new video on the Faculty of Humanities' YouTube-channel, we follow MA student Russian and Eurasian Studies Sophie. She is doing an internship at VPRO's OVT, a weekly Dutch radio show that provides historical backgrounds for news, columns and documentaries.

PhD defence

On 20 November 2025, eLaw hosted the second capacity-building session of the BIAS project, coinciding with the city’s first snowfall of the year. The training brought together HR practitioners, scholars, consultants, and policymakers to discuss the opportunities and challenges of using AI systems in…

How do I conduct research? How do I structure, conduct and record what I’ve thought of and done? The Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Programme didn’t just want students to perform a series of tests for the Cellular Biochemistry practical course. After a complete re-vamp - ‘From traditional cookbook lab…