During the Faculty of Science New Year's reception, Daniël Rozen was named Discoverer of the year 2015. Nienke van der Marel and Koen van der Maaden both won the prize for the best dissertation and Jeroen van Smeden was named Best Teacher of 2015.

An international team led by astronomers at Leiden University has shown in laboratory experiments that sulfur can bind with ammonium under icy cosmic conditions and form a salt that sticks to dust and pebbles. The resulting sulfur salt not only helps to explain the mystery of the missing sulfur gas,…

On the 19th of May 2020, our dear colleague and friend Professor Dr. Huib Ovaa has passed away from prostate cancer. Last summer Huib became ill, and in first instance it appeared that he had attracted a relatively harmless infectious disease. Unfortunately, it became soon apparent that he suffered…

Misleading graphs, the erosion of democracy and the weakening of bones as a side-effect of medication. Researchers are starting work on these very topical problems, funded by subsidies from the Leiden University Fund awarded on 12 October.

NASA’s telescope SOFIA has provided a new glimpse of the chemistry in the inner region surrounding massive young stars where future planets could begin to form. Leiden PhD candidate Andrew Barr writes about it in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists found massive quantities of water and organic…

Would you like to organise a session during the biggest multidisciplinary event in Europe - the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference - to be held in Leiden from 13 to 16 July 2022? If so, send us your proposal! Archaeologist Corinne Hofman is one of the driving forces behind the conference and…

Each year on the university’s birthday, children at primary schools in Leiden and The Hague have a lesson from a professor – about children’s rights and robots in surgery, for example. The children get to do activities. And ask questions: ‘How do you become a professor?’

An atomic vandal has finally been caught! Scientists from Leiden University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Laboratory have uncovered the mysterious cause behind the rapid corrosion of platinum electrodes. This breakthrough paves the way for more affordable green hydrogen production and…

Cramming from a book, making notes or learning summaries. In the past these were about the only ways to memorise your course material. But that has long since changed. Multimedia is the code word. But is it effective?

The challenge is considerable, but so is the satisfaction when it succeeds: creating complex sugar molecules that play a role in biology.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded chemist Dr Alexander Kros a Starting Independent Researcher Grant of 1.4 million euro. He will be using the grant to study how molecules penetrate the natural barrier of a cell membrane. If his research is successful, it will in time bring about a revolution…

Platinum is a widely used catalyst, but its precise mechanism largely remains a mystery to scientists. Ludo Juurlink has now demonstrated for the first time how oxygen reacts on the platinum surface. Together with PhD students Kun Cao and Richard van Lent and international colleagues he publishes his…

In order to better understand the course of Alzheimer’s disease, Frédérique Kok believes that a strategic and structured approach is needed: the Mastermind research approach. With her LUF grant, Kok wants to generate high-quality data to build a mathematical model that can recognize the onset of the…

Professors Simcha Jong (Leiden University) and Rifat Atun (Harvard University) convened an exploratory seminar to discuss challenges for health systems in realising the potential of precision medicine at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies in Cambridge, MA on 17 April 2017.

To what extent does exoplanet Proxima b resemble our Earth? And is there some form of life present? Astronomers hope to find answers to these questions with the new European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). An NWO research grant of €18 million will allow a Dutch consortium to continue building instruments…

Rob Zwijnenberg, Professor of Art and Science Interactions, uses daring experiments to get his students to think about social issues.

The European Research Council has awarded ERC Consolidator Grants to four researchers from Leiden. These grants of up to 2m euros will enable them to continue and expand their research.

Leiden and Austrian researchers have succeeded in further uncovering how a plant cell passes on the growth hormone auxin in a directional manner to the next cell. Three proteins that cling together in a bunch appear to be essential for this important transport process. ‘This discovery solves a crucial…

The title of European City of Science was officially handed over to a delegation from Leiden in the Italian city of Trieste on 6 September. Leiden will be the science capital of Europe for the year 2022. The EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), the largest interdisciplinary science conference in Europe, will…

Gerard van Westen has been appointed full Professor or Artificial Intelligence and Medicinal Chemistry. This chair has been jointly created by the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) as part of SAILS, the university stimulus program in Artificial…

Recently graduated Biology student Julia López Delgado is one of the winners of the Holland Society Young Talent Awards 2019. She received her prize during the festive award ceremony on 25 November in Haarlem.

They were pleased enough to receive a grant from the LUF International Study Fund (LISF). That the same research internship would also win them a prize is beyond their wildest expectations. Phebe van Langevelde and Nynke Anna van der Mark won, respectively, the Janneke Fruin-Helb grant for the best…

How big is the universe? How do stars form and evolve? And does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? These main questions in astronomy are the themes of the new exhibition Above & Beyond, which was created in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The exhibition…

Nine talented Leiden researchers have been awarded a Vidi subsidy by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Vidis are intended for researchers with several years of research experience who want to set up or expand their own line of research.

From a white leather armchair, on which Barack Obama once sat, Dean Michiel Kreutzer opened the academic year. This time not with visitors, but completely corona-proof via a live stream. In a homely setting, Kreutzer spoke with several guests, including Covid-19 researcher Thomas Hankemeier and brand…

On March 17, our dear colleague Jan Schmidt passed away after a fruitful and valuable life.

Researchers at LUMC are trying to decipher the biological clock. This knowledge can help deal with luxury problems, such as jetlag, but can also counter diseases. Molecular neurobiologist Erno Vreugdenhil explains.

A common assumption in chemistry is that the coordination number of a catalyst's surface determines the reactivity of the reaction it catalyses. Strikingly, Leiden chemists have now proven that this is not true for nature’s most simple chemical reaction: the dissociation of hydrogen. The researchers…

Rather than one key and one strong lock, biology often uses tens or hundreds of weaker links to bind parts together, such as cells membranes. This allows for selectivity and also reversibility: the binding can also be undone. Researchers first caught this phenomenon using spheres or colloids, and published…

Leiden PhD researcher Karin Öberg is one of the 17 winners of the NASA Hubble Fellowship. When she has obtained her PhD this autumn she will move to the United States for three years to conduct post-doctoral research into the role of ice in star formation.

Assistant professor Joost Willemse firmly believes that as a teacher, you’re never done learning. ‘Students ask questions about things you’ve never thought of yourself. Ultimately, that makes you better at your job.’ That’s why he always encourages his students to ask questions. And it’s appreciated:…

Two bacterial species team up inside the plant root system to rescue their host from fungal infection. This was discovered by a team of microbiologists and bioinformaticians from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Wageningen University, and the Institute of Biology Leiden. They also identified the…

The channel through which two cell components exchange material appears to form at the edge of their contact surface, and not in the middle. This was discovered by the Leiden physical chemists Jelger Risselada and Edgar Blokhuis together with researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.…

Accelerating the development of new cancer medicines by joining forces—that’s the mission of Oncode Accelerator, a Dutch consortium that recently welcomed three Leiden-based PhD candidates. Under the guidance of Gerard van Westen, Marc Boef, Remco van den Broek, and Lucina-May Nollen are exploring how…

Aad van der Vaart, professor of stochastics at Leiden University, has been awarded the NWO Spinoza Prize for his groundbreaking research in statistics. Van der Vaart conducts fundamental research on models that can help, for instance, to identify genes that play a role in cancer.

Gilles van Wezel will step down as Scientific Director (SD) of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) as of June 17th. He has held this position since September 2018. Van Wezel will be temporarily succeeded by Hubertus Irth, the current SD of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). Irth…

When the tokay gecko loses its tail, a new one grows from resident stem cells at the stump. Each tissue type - muscle, bone, blood vessels and skin - develops from specific stem cells. This discovery by Luthfi Nurhidayat holds potential implications for advancing regenerative medicine in humans. Nurhidayat…

An international team of researchers, including Federico Calle-Vallejo of Leiden University’s Institute of Chemistry, have taken the atomic-scale design of catalysts to the next level. Their research contributes to the quest for a method to generate or store energy more efficiently. The report is published…

Sjaak Neefjes, Professor of Chemical Immunology at Leiden University, will receive the NWO Spinoza Prize this year. The Spinoza Committee called Neefjes an ‘exceptional researcher whose intelligence is matched by his boldness’. He will use the 2.5 million euro prize to pursue his research into cancer…

Five of the new Medical Delta professors who now hold an appointment at multiple institutions are affiliated with Leiden University/LUMC. They are psychologist Andrea Evers and four LUMC professors.

What dose of medicine do you give a child? That depends to a large extent on how quickly their kidneys remove the drug from the blood. For ethical reasons it is impossible to measure this directly in little patients. PhD candidate Sinziana Cristea combined different types of modelling and lots of data…

From artificial intelligence to letters from the Dutch East Indies and from breast-cancer gene BRCA-1 to the collaboration between government and opposition: nine researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Vidi grant for their research.

One used 3D cell models to study colorectal cancer, while the other used machine learning for more efficient blood donation. For these achievements, Marieke Vinkenoog and Simon Christian Hansmann were awarded the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award on Tuesday 2 September.

Smooth platinum electrodes roughen and wear when subjected to repeated cycles of oxidation and reduction, which causes nanometer-scale mounds to grow. Leiden chemists Leon Jacobse and Marc Koper, together with physicist Marcel Rost, discovered the exact details, using a unique tunneling microscope.

Ten Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant, of up to 280,000 euros, will enable them to elaborate their ideas over a period of three years.

Leiden researchers have carried out successful tests using a new method of packaging a cancer vaccine in nano-particles. The new vaccine has induced a strong immune reaction in mice. The researchers believe that this method can make an important contribution to the treatment of cancer. Their findings…

A public symposium was held at Leiden University on 20 February on a hot topic: renewable energy. This is the second time in a year that the University has organised such a symposium. The previous one, about Artificial Intelligence, was a big success.

The electrochemical reduction of a group of organic compounds on platinum is strongly dependent on the arrangement of the atoms in the platinum surface. Christoph Bondue, postdoc in Marc Koper's group, published this in Nature Catalysis on 4 March. The reduction of such compounds is an important process…

A group of single-celled organisms organises its DNA in a similar way to higher organisms such as plants, animals, and fungi. However, the way packaged DNA is read out differs between the two related groups, Bram Henneman discovered. PhD defence on 5 December.

How can we supply the growing world population with sustainable energy? At Laurens College in Rotterdam, Prof. Marc Koper speaks with the students about the crucial role of chemistry in the energy transition. Guest classes like this are a good way for school students to learn about the academic world,…