A rapid increase in the demand for construction sand is driving shortages and inequality around the world. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University have mapped the growing need for sand, as well as the bottlenecks and possible solutions. They have published their…

This week an article was published in the American popular science magazine Scientific American on the uncertainty surrounding the extent to which territory can be claimed on the moon.

What are the mechanisms involved in the reconciliation of value conflicts and which interventions are capable of resolving such disputes?

Plants could be regarded as small chemical factories, which produce chemical substances via photosynthesis. If we can imitate photosynthesis in an artificial system, we can make clean fuels and materials out of sunlight and CO2. Huub de Groot is very close to designing a system of this kind.

2,240 plant extracts from 1,299 different plant species of Dutch origin. That’s the collection of the Dutch Extract Library, which has recently been transferred to the Institute of Biology Leiden. To plant biologist and contact person for this library Pingtao Ding this is a true treasury. ‘To bring…

Port City Futures is an initiative of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities collaboration. The program investigates the evolving socio-spatial conditions, use and design of port city regions, in particular exploring areas where port and city activities occur simultaneously and sometimes conflict.

A new therapy for the serious Graft-versus-Host disease

The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? Reconstructing our evolutionary trajectory is key for rethinking…

Health Data Science Leiden University

This project develops a scientific method to extract clinically relevant new information from patient forum websites that discuss patient experiences concerning e.g. medication, nutrition, co-morbidities, genetic factors etc.

Brownian motion is the random motion of (colloidal) particles due to collisions with the atoms and molecules of the solvents, which are moving due to temperature.

The first index to measure product safety, sustainability, and circularity, operationalising the EU’s (SSbD) framework.

This thesis investigates the application of deep learning techniques in image analysis across various domains, focusing on four main themes: feature extraction, classification, segmentation, and integration, demonstrating the transformative potential of these technologies.

Time-series forecasting through modelling sequences of temporally dependent observations has many industrial and scientific applications. While machine learning models have been widely used to create time-series forecasting models, creating efficient and performant time-series forecasting models is…

EuDEco (Modelling the European Data Economy) is a Coordination & Support Action (CSA) receiving funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.

The increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics necessitates the discovery of new medicines.

This dissertation investigates A'-dependencies in Standard German, Zurich German and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The analysis is carried out within the Principles & Parameters framework.

The research described in this thesis centered on retaining exo-β-glucosidases implicated in health and disease, in particular the human inherited lysosomal storage disorder, Gaucher disease (GD).

ChEMBL is a large-scale drug discovery database containing bioactivity information primarily extracted from scientific literature.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: Dr. A.J. Knobbe

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: A.J. Knobbe

Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle) produces valuable monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) such as vincristine and vinblastine, crucial for cancer treatment.

One of the most important correlation functions in physics, especially in cosmology, is the energy density, which describes how much energy is present at each point in spacetime due to matter fields. A key contribution to the energy density of the primordial universe comes from gravitational waves (GWs),…

Promotores: H.S. Overkleeft, G.A. van der Marel, Co-promotor: B.I. Florea

On the 28th of June, Laura Smorenburg successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Laura on this achievement!

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Ubbink

The experiments described in this thesis employ local lentiviral knockdowns in brain areas of female zebra finches followed by behavioural assays consisting of preference and Go/Nogo tasks.

On 7 December 2021, Georgina Kuipers defended the thesis 'Beschadigd vertrouwen'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. W. den Ouden and Prof. M.A. van der Steen (EUR).

Promotor: E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: J. Geml

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: C.M. Soares, A.J. Knobbe

This thesis discusses several questions regarding the double ramification cycle as a Chow class on the moduli space of stable n-pointed genus g curves using tools from so-called logarithmic geometry.

Computational linguistics uses computational methods to help answer linguistics questions across a variety of topics.

The lipid membrane is a basic structural component of all living cells. Embedded in this nanometer-thin barrier, membrane proteins shape the membrane and at the same time respond to the shape of the membrane.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-promotor: T.H. Reijmers

The deeper understanding of an organism's pathology is important for developing treatments. Over centuries of systematic research, clinical researchers have demonstrated that the more information they acquire about the cellular properties and their organisation in the tissue, the better they can understand…

Lysosomal glycosidases are acid hydrolases that fragment glycoconjugates in lysosomes.

Atherosclerosis, in particular rupture of atherosclerotic plaques, is the underlying cause of most heart attacks or strokes and is the leading cause of death worldwide.

This thesis describes how to scale down concepts of macroscopic mechanical metamaterials to the thermal scale using a system of flexibly-linked colloids.

Radiography is an important technique to inspect objects, with applications in airports and hospitals. X-ray imaging is also essential in industry, for instance in food safety checks for the presence of foreign objects.

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Irna Hofman defended her thesis on 10 January 2019.

Promotor: B. van de Water, Co-Promotores: J.H.N. Meerman, F.J. Verbeek

New and reemerging infectious diseases call for innovative and efficient control strategies of which fast vaccine design and development represent an important element.

Associate professor at the Natural Products Laboratory, Institute of Biology, Leiden University - the Netherlands