Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help humans in many different ways: from customised medicine and self-driving cars to preserving our cultural heritage. On 4 April academics from Leiden will talk about the achievements and opportunities of AI. A research dossier on AI is also online now, which looks…

An international team from the Netherlands, France, Norway and Austria demonstrate how new sequencing technologies can be used to efficiently generate the genome, DNA, sequence of an endangered animal, the European Eel.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. This makes fundamental research on the precise cause of the illness of vital importance. One of the possible suspects is a certain protein filled with iron. Leiden physicist Lucia Bossoni (LION/LUMC) has now developed a new way of investigating…

'We have to look for products that can replace ordinary disposable plastics, for example of organic material. Within 20 years, the average plastic use of a household will be largely reduced.' According to Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor at Leiden University College, in Edition NL of Tuesday, October…

Students at Leiden University College (LUC) learn about biodiversity not only in the lecture hall, but also in the natural environment. University lecturer Thijs Bosker and student Sebastiaan Grosscurt talk about using camera traps in a teaching and research project.

The goal of this book is to place architectural studies, in which people’s interactions with each other and material resources are key, at the crossing of both landscape studies and material culture studies, where it belongs.

Building a fire involves many variables, such as size, choice of fuel, temperature, and burn time, that affect the way the generated heat can be used, and therefore the potential function of a fire. A group of Leiden archaeologists are, together with a team of international colleagues, investigating…

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An international team of researchers, including Federico Calle-Vallejo of Leiden University’s Institute of Chemistry, have taken the atomic-scale design of catalysts to the next level. Their research contributes to the quest for a method to generate or store energy more efficiently. The report is published…

The United States has recently imposed sanctions on four more senior officials of the International Criminal Court, including Judge Prost, who is a Canadian national. Jens Iverson, assistant professor of international law, commented on this in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.

Ebru Alazi ‘hacked’ an enzyme-producing system in the fungus Aspergillus niger in order to produce renewable energy more easily. She manipulated the fungus, making it produce more pectinases: enzymes mainly used in the food industry and in the production of renewable energy, such as biofuels. Promotion…

On January 5, Rosa Winter will obtain her doctorate in arithmetic geometry. She researched solutions of equations that define so-called ‘del Pezzo surfaces’. ‘I like geometry because I can imagine and draw the shapes and objects,’ says Winter. ‘That makes abstract mathematics feel more tangible.’

Leiden political scientists Yvonne Kleistra and Niels van Willigen have advised the United States State Department as to how to evaluate its foreign policy. Point of departure was a scientific model that Kleistra and Van Willigen have developed on the basis of their work for the Dutch Foreign Affairs…

In the latest episode of DWDD University on 'Light', Prof. Robbert Dijkgraaf used a number of experiments from the Leiden Physics Practicum Lab. He showed why the sky is blue, that light is a wave phenomenon, how magnetism and electricity are connected and that white light consists of all colors of…

Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems continue to decline in Europe, which has serious consequences for human welfare. These are findings of a report that was formally approved by delegates from 127 governments during a UN plenary in Medellin, Colombia. Leiden researcher Alexander van Oudenhoven was one…

Recent developments in AI mean nobody is anonymous nowadays. The search engine PimEyes can find any photo of anyone that’s ever been placed online. No more Tinder Swindlers… or personal privacy. Everyone’s findable now. But is that even allowed?

PhD candidate Julia Wąsala searches for greenhouse gas emissions in satellite data. As a computer scientist, she bridges the gap between computer science and space research. ‘We really can't do this research without collaboration.’

Three quantum-safe cryptography methods have been standardised for worldwide use since this week. Léo Ducas co-designed the two primary PQC methods selected for this standardisation. Ducas is part of the Cryptology group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and is also professor of Mathematical cryptology…

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

Yeast, alpacas, and antibodies. They may seem unrelated, but within the project of the Leiden iGEM students, they come together perfectly. For the international synthetic biology competition iGEM, the team is working on an innovative method to produce nanobodies—a special form of antibodies—using brewer’s…

The people who lived in Saqqara, City of the Dead in Egypt, died thousands of years ago, but they are not all that different from us. This is what a study by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, The Netherlands concludes. If you wanted to prove that you had good taste in ancient Egypt then…

Even if you have a healthy lifestyle, there's a lot to experience and learn during the Healthy University Week, from 26 to 30 October. Health psychologist Andrea Evers is enthusiastic about the week ahead. She tells us about the programme and gives us a taste of her own talk on what the placebo effect…

The debate on migration and criminalisation concerns everyone from citizens and policymakers to academics. The Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift conference in Leiden in July aims to offer new insights and encourage collaboration. Artists are playing a key role.

Researcher Femke Reidsma has been awarded a prestigious Rubicon grant. With this fellowship, she will spend two years conducting research at Harvard University, where she will join a leading paleoecology laboratory.

Do you have a creative and curious attitude towards scientific research? Are you interested in the interaction of technology with the human context? Then join the upcoming Online Master's Week and learn more about the Media Technology MSc program, or about other Master's programs at Leiden Universit…

We, as LUGO, believe that with simple everyday actions we can prevent large amounts of single-use plastic water bottles from entering our oceans.

In a Leiden Law Blog, lab member Niek Strohmaier and Marc Broekema describe how their research on valuation biases was used by the Delaware Court of Chancery in a recent valuation dispute involving telecom giant AT&T.

Mining for natural resources harms the environment. But we desperately need them, for both the development of countries and the transition to a sustainable energy system. Professor of Sustainable Resource Use Ester van der Voet researches how we can reduce the environmental impact of natural resources…

There is too much focus on online radicalisation, says Joe Whittaker, when this is just one of the factors that make someone become a terrorist. In fact, Whittaker’s research shows that terrorists who use the internet are less successful in achieving their goal than those who stay offline. He will defend…

Light can be used to apply forces on single cells. Focused lasers have been used by physicists to tweeze particles and to manipulate them. These so called “optical tweezers” can be used as mechanical phenotyping tools for characterising the mechanics of materials and living objects.

A global synthesis of the extent, diversity and patterns in off-site fire use by historically documented and current hunter-gatherers with the remit of this study in the deeper past.

The updated MRI scanner at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) will become operational on 29 September. The new version is faster and better than the current model.

To increase the accuracy of climate models, it is crucial that they include past human land-use and human-driven vegetation changes. Here archaeology can make an important contribution. Current models are based on reconstructions of past vegetation. However, their accuracy is limited because it does…

The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) want to use private DNA databases for genealogical research in criminal investigations. The method could be used in serious criminal cases that have stalled and it is already being used in investigations abroad. Whether…

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

Gold nanoparticles give us a better understanding of enzymes and other molecules. Biswajit Pradhan, PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute of Physics, uses gold nanorods to study individual molecules that would be challenging to detect otherwise. Resulting knowledge can be applied to many research fields,…

This month, it came out that a subdistrict court judge used ChatGPT to formulate a ruling. The judge included some text generated by the popular AI chatbot in his decision. This resulted in a lot of media commotion, raising doubts as to whether using ChatGPT in court is permissible and responsible.

For hundreds of years, children in Ancient Egypt learned to read using The Satire of the Trades, a text in which a father gives advice to his son through descriptions of different professions. PhD candidate Judith Jurjens investigated how this worked in practice.

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

The availability of natural resources, the energy transition, the importance of circularity and our dependence on China. This and more is what Professor of Industrial Ecology René Kleijn's inaugural lecture is about.

A new administrative culture. Renewed vigour. More transparency. Will it become reality with the new government? And how do you go about achieving it? By all of us striving to change together: not just politicians, but also stakeholders, civil servants, media, and civilians. That was the conclusion…

The International Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme, with CML researcher Ester van der Voet as member, has prepared a report called Global Resources Outlook 2019: Natural Resources for the Future We Want. It examines the trends in natural resources and their corresponding consumption…

The government is digitalizing and making use of ‘big data’ in its decision making processes. But the expectations of digitalization are often overly optimistic, according to Bram Klieving, Professor Digitalization and Public Policy. Klievink is about to start with multidisciplinary research looking…

In health care, artificial intelligence is quite normal: it is used, for example, as an aid in making diagnoses. However, artificial intelligence is not yet used as much in drug development. A new prestigious partnership is therefore going to investigate how artificial intelligence can contribute to…

Understanding the formation and preservation of Pleistocene fire traces through laboratory-based experimental research

Self-directed learning is more suitable for intermediate and advanced language learners than for beginners.

While health data is essential for scientific research, that data also needs to be protected. In her doctoral thesis, Irith Kist found a balance between protecting the individual and exchanging health data.

Russian military concepts developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries still exist and have not lost their strategic relevance. The Russians used them to annex Crimea and are now applying them in the war in Ukraine. Although the concepts have been around for a long time, it does not mean they…

How do you progress from an immense gas cloud somewhere in the universe to a star with planets? Research by Astronomy PhD student Martijn van Gelder sheds more light on the earliest phases of this process. He will receive his doctorate on November 24th.