The refurbished P.J. Veth Building - the first completed sub-project in the Humanities Campus project - was officially opened in the summer of 2017. The Faculty of Humanities moved in straight away. . The building was meticulously transformed into a modern teaching building with attractive areas for…

Research in the Daniela Kraft Lab focuses on self-assembly in biological and soft matter systems, ranging from anisotropic colloidal particles to lipid membranes, emulsions, and viruses.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

Sander Blok has won the third edition of the annual LION Image Award. He created a colorful image of gold nanoparticles with a low-energy electron microscope.

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.

Leiden Science’s monthly dose of research inspiration from our staff, for our staff and all other curious minds.

The main aim of this thesis was to unravel the signaling and regulatory networks that drive tumor cell migration during breast cancer metastasis.

This is the physics summer school of Leiden University. It is part of the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). The summer school is intended for Bachelor (BSc) students in physics. It covers topics from quantum matter and optics, to biological & soft matter physics and cosmology and theoretical physics.…

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are the most abundant biological entity in nature. They shape bacterial communities and are a major driving force in bacterial evolution.

The goal of target discovery is to identify and validate proteins and biological pathways that are involved in the disease process. Modulating these target proteins and pathways with small molecules, therapeutic proteins or other biomolecules (e.g. mRNA) could deliver an effective and safe drug or v…

Some species of proteins which can form liquid-like condensates, also exhibit growth into fibers (or fibrils). One particularly interesting set of such proteins are those that are associated with neurodegeneration in which the fiber growth may be related to the pathological fibrils observed in disea…

Promotor: E.R. Eliel, Co-Promotor: M.J.A. de Dood

The zebrafish is a promising vertebrate model organism in early drug discovery and development.

Promotor: J. A. Bouwstra

Nucleoid associated proteins maintain the architecture of the bacterial chromosome and regulate gene expression, hinting that their role as transcription factors may involve local three-dimensional chromosome re-modelling.

Lysosomal glycosidases are acid hydrolases that fragment glycoconjugates in lysosomes.

Early time-resolved experiments by Frauenfelder on the ensemble of the kinetic rebinding of CO to myoglobin molecules resulted in a stretched exponential relaxa-tion due to a very large spread of the reaction rates of individual molecules.

In the research programme Drug Discovery & Safety, we are interested in the efficacy and safety of new drugs and novel means to decipher these aspects. Hence, we employ advanced imaging and high-throughput screening techniques next to computational approaches such as chem- and bioinformatics.

Promotor: R. Tijdeman, Co-promotor: H.J.J. te Riele

Image segmentation is a fundamental task in computer vision, with applications ranging from medical diagnostics to archaeological research.

In this study, we evaluated the influence of supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) spray drying conditions, in the absence of organic solvent, on the ability to produce dry protein/trehalose formulations at 1:10 and 1:4 (w/w) ratios.

Promotor: A. Kros

The quantum nature of matter and light has grown into a broad and fruitful research field for theorists and experimentalists alike. It combines foundational research with toward applications, the most well known of which is the quantum computer.

On 21 March The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) hosted the Life Sciences Café. Around 60 people from neighbour companies from the Leiden BioScience Park visited the facility for cryo-electron microscopy to get a glimpse behind the scenes. Head of NeCEN Ludo Renault believes it was…

The project aims to conserve and consolidate the entrance gate to the Roman Desert Frontier Fort Qasr Bshir.

The interactive media and simulations studio designed and built by our in-house Data & Media team.

Research projects for students of the University of Leiden and other Dutch Universities are often available at the MacBio group. The research lines are also described in the Research section. For details of specific projects contact the supervisor (Ubbink, Dame, Boyle, Jeuken or Wentink).

This weeks marks the 10th anniversary of the European Research Council. For the past decade, the council has contributed to many scientific projects all over Europe, including Leiden University. It has funded almost 7,000 researchers, leading to just short of 100,000 scientific articles. A total of…

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof. dr. A.H. Meijer

Synthetic or artificial cells are vesicles, often lipid vesicles, with wide ranging applications from drug delivery to nanoreactors in biocatalysis. We are developing polymer-lipid hybrid vesicles for applications in compartmentalised biocatalysis, in which the polymer has been shown to greatly enhance…

Promotor: M.A.G.J. Orrit

This thesis systematically studies the physicochemical properties of non-planar, propeller-shaped, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The synthesis of several so-called propellerenes is described on a gram scale, using optimized procedures aimed at using less hazardous reagents and reducing the amount…

Synthetic cells, also known as artificial cells or protocells, have wide ranging applications from drug delivery vectors to cell models. In biotechnology they can function as micro- or nanoreactors with possible applications in biocatalysis and photocatalysis. Phospholipids are by far the most commonly…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.A.G.J. Orrit

The Kroese-Duijsters Symposia aim to provide researchers from different fields and different career stages to meet in an informal setting, to stimulate discussions and to start new collaborations. The Kroese-Duijsters Symposia started in 2022 and we are pleased to invite you to the 4th Kroese-Duijsters…

To get an idea of the science communication products and research that is possible, a few examples of student projects of recent years are shown below.

PhD defence

Bones hold a wealth of information about a person’s life, revealing details about where they came from, how old they were when they died and what diseases they may have had. Scientists can use this data to piece together aspects of an individual's life, offering valuable insights that can help address…

Apps that can precisely identify shards, coins or heel bones: archaeology has embraced artificial intelligence. Alex Brandsen is working on a search engine that scans vast quantities of text from an archaeological viewpoint.

Archiving Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeological Fieldwork Data from the Eastern Mediterranean (600-2000)

The guardian of our genome, the protein MutS, scans the DNA for spelling errors and makes sure they are corrected. An essential process for our health. Researchers at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have discovered precisely how this protein works by making MutS visible with cryo-electron microscopy.…

Ariane Briegel, Professor of Ultrastructural biology in Leiden, has received a prestigious incentive from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. With the grant of 800,000 euros, Briegel will set up a new research line into studying symbiotic interactions on the nanoscale.

The European Union has invested ten million euros in the so-called iNEXT-Discovery consortium. The goal of this new consortium is to enable European researchers to extend innovative structural biology research. The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) is also part of iNEXT-Disovery, which…

Synthetic fuel is cleaner than natural oil, but its production process needs to be more efficient. Now for the first time, physicists have directly observed the molecules produced in the chemical process. This paves the way for designing more efficient catalysts. Publication on September 19th in Nature…

Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.

LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.

How can we make the information in handwritten historical research reports accessible and searchable? Data scientists at Leiden University are working with other universities on a method that will improve access to cultural heritage.

Joost Batenburg is a mathematician and computer scientist who works to build bridges to other disciplines. He hopes to bring intelligent software to fields where it can make a difference. Conversely, he also seeks connections to the disciplines that are needed to make AI a success.

LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.