Eight early-career researchers from around the world have been awarded a 51 Pegasi b Fellowship – a prestigious opportunity for astronomers. Julia Santos, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory, is one of them. We asked her four questions about this remarkable fellowship.

The Netherlands celebrates Space Exploration Day on 12 April each year. Space exploration has brought us ground-breaking discoveries with applications on Earth as well as in space. Leiden University is at the forefront of space innovation. Below are some examples.

Leiden PhD candidate Jo-Anne Verschoor discovered that nearly twenty percent of the bacterial strains she studied could degrade plastic, though they needed some encouragement to do so. ‘Bacteria are just like people,’ says Verschoor. Her research was published in the journal Communications Biology,…

Data scientist Lindsey Burggraaff has won the second edition of the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award. She receives the prize for her research into bioactive substances in food. ‘Burggraaff's work is situated at a unique intersection of data science, biochemistry and the fields of food and nutrition,’…

On 22 November, Leiden scientist Jan Vonk received an ERC starting grant for his research on the building blocks of mathematics. This grant is not his first this year: in fact, this July Vonk also received a Vidi from NWO. Four questions to the scientist who got two grants this year.

Six researchers from Leiden University have received an ERC starting grant. This grant of on average 1.5m euros will enable the researchers to launch their own project, form their own research team and develop their best ideas.

Are you moving to the Netherlands with your partner and looking to build your own career here? Whether your partner will be working at Leiden University or elsewhere, this page is for anyone relocating to the Netherlands and exploring job opportunities. Here you’ll find useful tips, resources, and links…

As of 6 October 2025, Leiden University has incorporated three key HR processes into a new platform: the Talent and Development Platform.

Three of the four Heineken Young Scientists Awards for 2022 have gone to researchers from Leiden: chronobiologist Laura Kervezee, physicist Jordi Tura i Brugués and health psychologist Liesbeth van Vliet.

Before you start creating text and visual content for your educational video, make sure you have a clear picture of your learning objectives and how you are going to assess these. When you have established these, you can further develop what you want to teach. Keep in mind that there is already a lot…

The ISSC (ICT Shared Service Centre) helpdesk offers ICT support to all users of university workplaces.

An ORCID iD is a unique code that identifies you as a scientist in a reliable and consistent way, much like the social security number in a passport. DOI does the same but for a scientific publication instead of a person. DOI and ORCID iD are examples of persistent identifiers.

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

Data Science & AI student Nataliia Bagan combines a passion for mathematics, language, and artificial intelligence. Her exceptional bachelor’s thesis on improving reasoning in large language models earned her a nomination for the Leiden Science Young Talent Award 2025.

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As a member of staff, you can use Teams Phone for internal phone calls, or to call both mobile numbers and fixed numbers. To do so, you need to be logged in to your university Microsoft 365 account.

From telescopes to science fiction: in just one semester, students with no background in physics or astronomy get to explore the universe. The first group of students started last month in the new minor Our Universe.

Understanding the behaviour of tiny droplets in our cells could aid the search for new treatments. A team of Leiden researchers has developed a groundbreaking method to study how these droplets transition from liquid to solid. This change plays a role in various diseases, including neurodegenerative…

Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl can see dilemmas but above all opportunities in the search to increase the societal value of research in Leiden.

Biologist Nataliia Machushynets felt like she was ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’, trying to find new antibiotics to help solve the problem of resistance. During her PhD research, she did find what she was looking for, in the soil beneath our feet.

Astronomer Joseph Callingham and his team have observed for the first time a clear signal from a giant burst from a star outside our solar system. This would have a devastating impact on any unfortunate planet orbiting the star.

An international team of astronomers led by Dutch scientist Martijn Oei has discovered the largest pair of jets from a black hole ever seen. The 'jumbojets' extend a combined length of 140 Milky Ways. The Leiden Observatory played a prominent role in this research. The publication will feature on the…

The working language at Leiden University is Dutch. As not all employees at the University have the same level of Dutch language skills, there are various ways of working together.

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