The ISSC's ICT helpdesk receives dozens of questions from staff and students every day. A collaboration between TNO, LUCL and the ISSC aims to determine whether a specially designed chatbot could provide support in this area.

Arts and culture

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

In a new study published in PLOS One, Leiden archaeologist Anastasia Nikulina, together with an international team from France, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, challenges the long-held belief that early humans had minimal impact on their environment before the rise of farming.

In January, Dr Karsten Lambers was appointed as Professor of Digital and Computational Archaeology at Leiden University's Faculty of Archaeology. With his extensive background in both archaeological research and computational sciences, the installation of Professor Lambers further strengthens this discipline…

Professor Amir Zadpoor is developing biomaterials, and engaging in 3D, 4D, and bioprinting. 'Collaboration and regular contact with clinicians serve as a sanity check for all our ideas.'

In the ‘Imaginary’ exhibition, its curators show how society is made up of mathematics. From algorithms that save lives to ones that generate art. The exhibition is from 2 June to 25 July at Oude UB in Leiden.

In the spring of 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new postdoc. Dita Auzina, originally from Latvia, works as a researcher in the project of Alex Geurds. ‘I have joined the project as a landscape archaeologist, but I also run my own fieldwork in Nicaragua.’

PhD defence

How do young zebra finches learn to sing? A research team led by researcher Katharina Riebel has developed a ‘RoboFinch’ to study just that. She and colleagues in the 'Seeing voices' research consortium have spent the past four years designing the robotic bird. And with success: young zebra finches…

X-ray and CT scanners are widely used devices in research, diagnostics and the industrial sector. And yet they are not nearly as fast and accurate as we would like. Mathé Zeegers is researching the newest technique in the field at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science: spectral X-ray imaging.…

The Research Institute for Mathematics & Computer Science in Amsterdam hosts a unique X-ray machine that creates 3D scans of the most diverse objects. This allows them to reveal details that remain hidden in regular scans. In a series of articles they showcase examples of what happens in the lab. Leiden…

PhD defence

Four lecturers from Leiden University will receive a 50,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. This will enable them and their team to realise an educational innovation within their own teaching.

Aline Vidotto has been appointed professor of Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics at the Observatory from 1 February. Vidotto has been with the university for 3.5 years and for her, the appointment is ‘a milestone in her career.’

In ancient times, the desert in the Udhruh region in Jordan was transformed into a green oasis. An intricate network of underground water channels was part of an ancient system of water management, storing water and preventing loss through evaporation. Archaeologist Mark Driessen found a new way to…

The tour for programme chairs through the new Humanities Hub covered just one corridor. Previously, the labs were spread across the campus, but now most of them have been consolidated in the Huizinga Building.

In two weeks' time, the official opening of the Humanities Hub will take place in the Huizinga Building. The first projects have already begun. Professor Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong and director of the AI and Digital Humanities Lab Jelena Prokic share their experiences.

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

On the 8th of December 2021, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) organized “Circuit Topology 2021”, the first international symposium on circuit topology. The focus was on the mathematical notion of Circuit Topology, and its applications to physics, chemistry and biomedicine.

The AI chatbot ChatGPT has a clear left-liberal bias when filling in the Stemwijzer voting advice application. This was discovered by master's student Merel van den Broek during an assignment for the Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing course.

Cleveringa Lecture

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

The two instruments of ESA's space telescope Euclid have taken their first test images. The first images indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific goals for which it was designed - and possibly much more. Euclid will create a 3D map of a third of the sky, allowing scientists to study…

Connecting as the magic word. Seeking new collaborations, presenting ourselves to the outside world with an open attitude and showing what we do. During the opening of the academic year on Tuesday afternoon, Dean Jasper Knoester emphasised that change and connection are necessary for the university…

The steady decline in lethal gun violence in the EU came to halt in 2012 and some countries, such as Sweden, have even noticed an increase since then. An arms race among drug criminals and an increase in the availability of illegal firearms could lead to more criminal and gun violence. This is one of…

Translating ancient texts, filling in missing parts of clay tablets: articles are popping up more and more often about the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence for researching documents in the oldest scripts. Are we better off leaving the deciphering of ancient texts to computers from now…

People can be easily mislead with graphs. But they don’t necessarily stay misled, the research shows.

Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

Lecture

PhD defence