Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

By comparing individual health data with population data, doctors can provide personalized health advice and patients can learn from each other's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, professor of Applied Data Analytics shows how personal data can have predictive value.

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

Designing innovative algorithms, thinking outside the box, and brainstorming over coffee with his colleagues — this is what physicist Stefano Polla enjoys most. His success shines through in his nomination for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2024 for PhD thesis of the Year.

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that these changes to the behavior of the immune system are persistent and can continue even after diet is improvedAlmost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not…

The research presented in this thesis concerns one of the most important questions in software engineering of our time: how can we make sure that software is free from memory safety bugs?

The new institute manager of the IBL studied biology for six months, but went in a completely different direction: development cooperation and the financial sector. Three decades later, Resi Janssen is making a radical career switch. Or isn’t she? 'In ten years’ time I want IBL to be in a new, sustainable…

Computer Science on place 51 in QS World Universities Ranking 2011

During post-embryonic development into adults, animals face an environment that fluctuates constantly. For example, in nutrient availability, temperature, and osmolarity (e.g., salt concentration).

LIACS scholars Thomas Bäck and Hao Wang will be the new Editors-in-Chief of the Evolutionary Computation Journal from November 1. Published by MIT Press since its foundation in 1993, the journal stands as a keystone in the field, providing a global platform for researchers exploring the workings of…

With increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and their detrimental effect on the global climate, modern society needs to push for more renewable energy sources. Storing widely accessible and abundant solar energy in chemical bonds in the form of molecular fuel via artificial photosynthesis…

Constraint multi-objective optimization with a limited budget for function evaluations is challenging. This thesis tackles this problem by proposing new optimization algorithms. These algorithms are applied on holistic ship design problems. This helps naval architects balance objectives like cost, efficiency,…

For the first time, a computer can compete with the very best human players in StarCraft II, a video game played by tens of thousands at a professional level and by millions just for fun. Mike Preuss, university lecturer at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) responds to the achievement…

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.

Can a computer give just as good a judgment as a judge? Professor emeritus Law and IT believes it can and talks about using computers in the courtroom in a podcast of the Universiteit van Vlaanderen.

Brain activity changes as people age, which can lead to cognitive decline. By measuring and comparing brain data from mice and humans, the researcher will investigate how the brain’s noise levels change with age and affect choice behavior.

With the rise of AI, interest in computational linguistics and language models has taken flight. But machines are far from being able to go it alone. In her inaugural lecture, Professor Carole Tiberius will stress the importance of research on word combinations. ‘We know a great deal but there is a…

Promotor: S.J. Edixhoven, Co-promotor: K.J. Batenburg

In healthcare, gender and sex considerations are crucial because they affect individuals' health and disease differences. Yet, most algorithms deployed in the healthcare context lack close consideration of these aspects and do not account for bias detection. In their latest paper, Eduard Fosch-Villaronga,…

From 1 October onwards, Dennis Claessen and Marcel Schaaf will be the new directors of education of Biology. They will replace Han de Winde. Schaaf will be responsible for the bachelor, while Claessen will mainly focus on the master tracks of Biology. We gave students and the education office the change…

Samineh Bagheri is the first PhD candidate to defend her thesis fully remotely.

On 13 March 2024, Carlotta Rigotti, postdoc researcher at eLaw, and Alexandre Puttick, postdoc researcher at Bern University of Applied Sciences, remotely presented the working paper 'Towards mitigating diversity bias of AI in recruitment and selection via value sensitive design' at the ACM Symposium…

At Molecular Physiology we teach the following courses within the Leiden Institute of Chemistry's Chemistry and Life Science and Technology programmes.

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

Promotores: J.N. Kok, H.J. Hoogeboom

This article explores how the meaning of the rule of law has evolved over the past century in UK and US parliamentary speeches, focusing on procedural (thin) and substantive (thick) conceptualisations.

Promotor: J. van der Greef, T. Hankemeier; Co-promotor: H.A. van Wietmarschen

The power of personalized nutrition lies in being able to conduct clinical research on healthy people while capturing metabolic markers sensitive to the impact of environmental and metabolic stressors (e.g. diet, changing sex hormones and the menstrual cycle).

This thesis describes the development and optimization of the first molecular tools to study the enzyme PLA2G4E.

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

In this thesis, I targeted the orchid genus Lepanthes, one of the six genera of angiosperms that surpasses 1,000 species in the Neotropics, as a study model to investigate the evolutionary processes that promoted species diversifications.

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that is offered free of charge to anyone interested.

Gianclaudio Malgieri, after having served as an Editorial Board Member of Computer Law & Security Review, Elsevier (CLSR) in the last three years, has now been appointed as Associate Editor of that review.

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of the new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that begins on September 19.

Key publications of the Computational Drug Discovery group

Lichens enthusiast Sander van Zon was eager to use his knowledge for his internship. He wrote an excellent thesis on lichens’ biodiversity in the city, of which his first scientific publication will appear soon. With it, he is nominated for the Leiden Science Young Talent Award 2022.

To explore the potential of marine microorganisms as producers of novel antimicrobial agents and as bioprotectants in aqua- and agriculture, using an integrative, ecology-based strategy for bioprospecting.

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.

In this thesis, the discovery and optimization is described of chemical tools to study the N-acylethanolamine (NAE) biosynthetic pathway.

This thesis describes the importance of being able to control the selectivity of potential drug candidates.

A complex community of microbes develops in the infant gut shortly after birth. We call this community the infant gut microbiota. The microbiota influences the health of the infant, which makes the composition and function of the infant gut microbiota an important topic to study.