Leiden physicists have managed to detect a single molecule called dibenzoterrylene in a new crystal, and found that it is a candidate component for a quantum network. Future quantum computers will need such a network to work together while maintaining their advantages. Publication in ChemPhysChem jo…

Our dear colleague and friend Kathy MacDonald passed away unexpectedly on August 9th, 2022, a few days after her 46th birthday. Her sudden passing came as a tremendous shock to her colleagues and friends at the Faculty of Archaeology and to colleagues and former students both in The Netherlands and…

Bacteria whirl around in the mouths of most people, forming dental plaques and sometimes causing nasty gum infections. Treponema denticola might be a dangerous pathogen, but not much is known about this bacterium. It was up to Ariane Briegel and her research group to change that.

A certain type of oil droplets changes shape when cooled and shrunk: from spherical through icosahedral to flat hexagonal. Two competing theories couldn't fully explain this, but now, a Physical Review Letter by Ireth García-Aguilar and Luca Giomi solves the mystery.

The 14 universities, brought together in the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), have expressed their support for the open letter on the climate that has already been signed by almost 1,300 staff members. The letter calls on the universities to pursue an ambitious climate agenda of…

For the twelfth consecutive year, Leiden University College The Hague has been awarded the 'Top Programme' quality label by the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2025. With an impressive overall score of 89 out of 100 points, the Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges (BA/BSc) programme has earned five…

Lecture

The receptor nomenclature committee of IUPHAR, the International Union of Pharmacology, has several subgroups. Among these are a few that our division is involved in, those for adenosine, nicotinic acid, and GnRH receptors.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Using mathematics to help children with bone cancer. It sounds a little strange, but for statistician Marta Fiocco, it's just her job. She gets a substantial grant from KiKa for it. With that money, she is going to study the effect of chemotherapy adjustments.

How do you move 3,000 fragile clay tablets that date back thousands of years? This was the challenge faced by staff from the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). After years of preparation, the Liagre Böhl collection has been moved on trolleys to its new home.

Leiden University is under fire: it is allegedly doing too little to tackle antisemitism. Rector Hester Bijl responds to this accusation and to a video from 2014 on social media in which extreme remarks are made. ‘We can be short about such comments: they are unacceptable. The university is and always…

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.

After hard work in the lab, Chemist Tirong Guo has developed a group of materials that provide a stable and efficient foundation for artificial photosynthesis. Will this enable the large-scale production of hydrogen and other useful compounds in the most sustainable way possible? Guo will defend her…

Martina Huber, Jacqueline Labra Munoz research Alzheimer's disease. They study ferritine, iron storage in the brain. An inbalance of iron could play a role in this form of dementia.

Nathaniel Martin, Professor of Biological chemistry, wondered what would happen if you take an antibiotic that has been known for 70 years and try to improve it with the latest tools of modern chemistry. Turns out it can become up to a hundred times more potent and prevent the growth of some drug-resistant…

A more efficient solar panel sounds great. But what if these new panels consume more toxic materials, or their production consumes a lot of energy? Leiden environmental scientists, together with colleagues from the Fraunhofer ISE, address this multifaceted question in a new publication in the prestigious…

An all-optical transistor, a molecule-sized sensor and a new kind of single-photon source for quantum communication. All dreamed applications of fundamental physics that are one step closer thanks to Robert Smit. On 12 June, he defended his PhD thesis with distinction.

Measurements on a superconducting material show an abrupt transition between a normal metal and a 'strange' metal. The really strange thing, however, is that this abruptness disappears when the temperature falls. 'We don't have any theoretical machinery for this', says theoretical physicist Jan Zaanen,…

Leiden PhD student Xuequan Zhou has designed a new promising molecule that efficiently kills cancer cells, but does not harm healthy tissue. The trick: the drug is only active when irradiated with light. Zhou’s new compound does this extra efficiently by cleverly self-organising into nanoparticles.…

Luca Giomi has the first results of his ERC consolidator grant. He discovered that epithelial cells move collectively but in different ways, depending on the scale you look at. It is hexatic at small scales, and becomes nematic at larger scales: it is a multiscale order. This collective movement of…

This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

The use of a new type of detector has generated a strong improvement in the resolution of electron microscopes. The 'low-energy electron microscope' (LEEM) can now be used for research on the thinnest possible materials. The tests with the detector represent the first result of the ESCHER project.

Dennis Broeders, professor of global security and technology at ISGA (Institute of Security and Global Affairs), together with two partners, has been granted a major European project: EU Cyber Direct. Together with EU ISS and Carnegie Europe, ISGA forms a new consortium for 3 years with a total budget…

Researchers need to work in specialized environments when they work with dangerous bacteria and viruses. These microbes spread easily, so only in labs with a high biosafety levels they can be studied. Unfortunately, to look at the microbes properly, expensive microscopes are needed that are not always…

Are you working at Leiden University and researching migration regimes outside of the Global North? Are you interested in doing fieldwork or a research visit at one of our partner universities? Then you might want to join the Leiden team of the EU-funded Marie Curie Staff Exchange Network on non-western…

A special type of mirror to reflect X-rays has more possible applications than space research. Targeted radiation therapy for cancer, for example. Next to his full-time job, physicist David Girou mapped out the possibilities. He will receive his PhD on 14 June.

At the end of 2018, the LUF announced a new annual grant: the Snouck Hurgronje Grant. This annual grant is awarded to innovative interfaculty research and teaching projects. Three project teams secured a place on the shortlist with their research proposals. They were invited to present their plan to…

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

A combination of two potential drugs gives hope of a 'super blockage' of an over-active immune system, Leiden researchers report in Nature. The breakthrough came from the crystallisation of a membrane protein.

What do you do when you’re suddenly given access to a whole lot of data but don’t know how to organise and analyse it? Maritime historians in the Faculty of Humanities joined forces with vocational college (MBO) students to build a database. ‘We’re so compatible with each other.’

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Nu in heel Europa rechtse partijen hoog scoren in de peilingen is de verwachting dat de discussie omtrent migratie flink opgeschud gaat worden. Desondanks maant hoogleraar Sarah Wolff tot kalmte.

The previous blog post in this series discussed the role of international diplomacy during the coronavirus crisis. This post focuses on diplomacy and its challenges in post-corona times. Specifically, the blog post argues that diplomats will face a range of challenges following the Covid-19 pandemic…

Xander Tielens, Professor of Physics and Chemistry of the Interstellar Space, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to study polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. The combination of astronomical observations, computer models and lab research makes the research highly interdisciplinary.

On Monday 23 January 2023 J.T.P. (Hans) de Bruijn passed away at the age of 91. Until 1995 he held the Chair of New Persian Language and Culture at Leiden University.

This Thursday, January 18th 2024, our esteemed colleague Jan Zaanen passed away. Jan was one of our star scientists, larger than life, with an unabashed, boisterous drive for the best of physics at the Institute Lorentz, at the Leiden Institute of Physics and in the full international scientific community.…

How do bacteria sense and adapt to their environment? Ariane Briegel, Professor of Ultrastructural Biology, is intrigued by this question. Using new techniques, she produces three-dimensional images of bacteria that provide us with new clues about their sensory system.

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

Conference

Conference, Roundtable

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

PhD defence

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…