During the 20th anniversary meeting of the Netherlands' Catalysis and Chemistry Conference, Marc Koper received the Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award. ‘The ultimate candidate for the prize’, it says in one of the recommendation letters.

An inclusive society in which everyone has equal access to health and wealth is the focus of the new Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre on the Governance of Migration and Diversity. Professor of Migration History, Marlou Schrover, also works at the new centre. ‘It is important to add a historical perspective…

From COA to the police and from the Red Cross to a ministry, in the coming months, students from the Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) will have the opportunity to work on real solutions for partner organisations. In December partners and students met for the first time. 'It is a great opportunity to…

Astronomers from the Leiden Observatory and from the University of Rochester (in the US) have discovered that the planetary ring system that covered the very young sun-like star J1407 is actually of enormous proportions. In fact, it’s much larger and heavier than the ring system surrounding Saturn.…

Studying how single DNA molecules behave helps us to better understand genetic disorders and design better drugs. Until now however, examining DNA molecules one-by-one was a slow process. Biophysicists from Delft University of Technology and Leiden University developed a technique that speeds up screening…

A special beginning of this unique faculty year 2020 - 2021: on Wednesday 2 September, the opening of the faculty year took place online from the renovated Arsenaal building. The opening started with a round table with nine special guests and was followed by a quiz and the presenting of the Faculty…

An international team of astronomers has published the most sensitive images of the Universe ever taken at low radio frequencies, using the International Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). ‘LOFAR is unique in its ability to make high-quality images of the sky at metre-wavelengths’, said Huub Röttgering, Leiden…

Dennis Claessen has been appointed professor of Molecular Microbiology at the Institute of Biology Leiden. With his teaching and research on the cell wall, the professor wants to establish applications in the industry and the medical sector.

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…

It sounds futuristic, but it is possible: the creation of miniature organs of patients in order to study them and see how diseases develop and can be treated. This is what researchers from the LUMC, Twente University (UT), UMCG, TU Delft and the Hubrecht Institute hope to achieve in the next ten years…

On Monday 6 February, 2017 it is exactly ten years since the FSW Master Thesis Lab was set up. And the Faculty is proud and delighted to mark the anniversary of this special facility for master’s students.

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

The Young Academy has gained a new Leiden humanities scholar as a member. University lecturer Greek language and literature Tazuko van Berkel will be appointed as a member as of March.

Rather than one key and one strong lock, biology often uses tens or hundreds of weaker links to bind parts together, such as cells membranes. This allows for selectivity and also reversibility: the binding can also be undone. Researchers first caught this phenomenon using spheres or colloids, and published…

Maarten Jansen, professor emeritus at the Faculty of Archaeology, was appointed as Distinguished Emeritus Professor for two years at the University of Bonn. In this position, Jansen, a world-renowned specialist on ancient Mexican pictorial manuscripts, will further expand upon the long-standing collaboration…

In ten years, it is projected that ten percent of global civil aviation operations will be unmanned. Are the current international aviation laws and regulations up to these technological developments? Fernando Fiallos will defend his dissertation on 14 November 2019.

A consortium including economists, psychologists and public administration scholars from Leiden University will study public acceptance of the hydrogen transition in the Netherlands. They will look at the labour market impact, public perceptions of hydrogen and businesses’ willingness to invest.

How can we make studying easier for students with a functional disability? This will be the key question during a public conference on 20 April. Romke Biagioni (Fenestra) explains why there is such a need for this conference. Are you going to be there?

There are still things we can learn from the Ancient Greeks. How they managed to make sure that innovations were accepted, for example. A group of classics scholars, led by Leiden, will be carrying out research on this question funded by the largest ever NWO subsidy.

Ruben van Gaalen used a very unique approach for a course of the research master Colonial and Global History: instead of writing an essay, he went to Dublin and made a documentary about African rappers in Ireland.

Simulations of galaxy formation provide much more information about galaxies than a telescope. Simulations have been improving significantly in recent years. Astronomer Evgenii Chaikin made such a significant contribution to this field that he graduated with honours on February 27th.

Students presented the prototypes of educational tools they made in the first ten weeks of the new minor Living Education Lab. We asked two students and a teacher about their first experiences in this minor.

With the new Euclid satellite, scientists are going to map a large part of the sky. The satellite ofthe European Space Agency (ESA) will soon give them a better view of the galaxies and matter in the universe. Professor of Galactic Astronomy Koen Kuijken and a team of Dutch scientists are receiving…

Researchers have spent years looking for the ‘missing link’ between wolves and dogs. But many of the domesticated dogs that had been found prove to have been wolves after all. This is what vet and archaeologist Luc Janssens says in his dissertation. PhD defence on 27 June.

After completing one bachelor’s and two master’s programmes at Leiden University, alumnus in Philosophical Perspectives on Politics and the Economy Matthieu Agustoni finished his student life with a bang: he got his master's thesis published in a prestigious journal.

A star does not just appear in the sky overnight. Its creation takes tens of thousands of years. Twenty years ago, astronomers took a picture of a star in its birth phase. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could now capture that same star in much greater detail. This does not only provide beautiful…

Alumnus Pim Spelier is one of the two winners of the ASML Graduation prizes for mathematics students. He used a new method to solve single polynomial equations. Bachelor student Jorre The wins one of the ORTEC Incentive prizes for the best study results during the first year. On 30 November, the Royal…

The Faculty of Science has reinforced the collaboration in China during a group trip late November. Representatives from four institutes visited ten Chinese top universities and interviewed over 130 students in PhD workshops in Beijing and Shanghai.

The enthusiastic finalists of the Sustainable Business Battle proved that sustainability and business can go together well. Fire in their bellies, they pitched their green solutions, ranging from an Energy Race app for DUWO to a cycle parking facility covered with plants at the Bio Science Park.

From simulations of galaxies to analyses of MRI scans: scientific research needs more and more computing power. Leiden University is planning to set up a completely new facility for high-performance computing. The green light was given officially on 20 June.

VVI Research Meetings 2023-2024

Prof. Annetje Ottow and Assist. Prof. Seda Gürkan visited the College of Europe campus in Bruges on 22 March 2024.

Dr. Mei Wang, chair of ‘Leiden University - European Center for Chinese Medicine and natural compounds’ has been awarded the ‘Qihuang prize’. The prize is awarded by the Chinese Medicine Society in recognition of her significant contribution to Chinese medicine outside China and to further stimulate…

Running up to the Dutch Parliament elections, a group of diligent fact checkers under the moniker ‘Nieuwscheckers’ checked the validity of statements made by politicians and media outlets. Inspired by Nieuwscheckers’ success, a new task force was called to life: the Web Integrity Workgroup. Their aim:…

Dutch shipbuilder Damen Shipyards has sued the government. With the legal action, the company is seeking compensation for financial loss suffered as a result of the sanctions against Russia.

Lynette Janssen, PhD candidate at the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law, has been awarded the Bronze Medal in the competition for the International Insolvency Institute’s 2017 Prize in International Insolvency Studies.

Only 27 per cent of Dutch households are financially healthy. This appears from a joint study conducted by Deloitte, ING, NIBUD and the Department of Economics of Leiden University.

Organ-on-chip technology is used in drug research and customized treatments for patients. Research Institutes and industry join forces within the Institute for human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT) that was officially launched on May 18. Combining facilities, people and expertise will allow…

Leiden University is part of a Dutch consortium that will receive 4.7 million euros from NWO to build a facility that makes controlled, thin layers of material. The facility can produce small and large films, something that is globally unique. And that is key to scaling up, for example, new catalysts…

As the flagship journal of the National Academy of Sciences USA, PNAS publishes several special features each year highlighting topics that are expected to engage the interest of the journal’s broad readership. Archaeologist Wil Roebroeks was invited by the Editors of PNAS to contribute a paper on the…

The March ILS lunch seminar will take on a slightly different format, as we have the honour of receiving Prof. Vassilis Hatzopoulos who will present his new book on the Collaborative Economy and EU Law.

Leiden University has come 20th in the annual SustainaBul ranking. The SustainaBul is a prize awarded to the most sustainable higher education institution in the Netherlands. This position, a drop compared to last year, highlights which will require particular attention in the University’s new sustainability…

Arco Timmermans, professor by special appointment Public Affairs, wrote an article about coalitions in times of corona for Verenigings Management Magazine van De Nederlandse Associate.

On Friday evening 17 September, Leiden astronomer Joe Callingham can be seen in a new series on Discovery channel. Killers of the Cosmos is about different deadly dangers lurking in the depths of space. Asteroids, cosmic debris, electromagnetic weapons… The show takes a film-noir approach to these threats,…

This year’s “best master’s thesis in the area of national or international history” was written by Bareez Majid, who has completed a research master's in Middle Eastern Studies. She wins the prestigious 2015 Volkskrant–IISG thesis prize for her courageous, solid research on a former “torture prison”…

Academics who offer their books free online reach many more readers and are cited slightly more often. Surprisingly enough, it has little effect on the sale of paper editions, positive or negative. This is the conclusion of PhD candidate Ronald Snijder. PhD defence 29 January.

Former leader of the Canadian opposition, world-renowned scholar and current President of Central European University (in Budapest) Prof. dr. Michael Ignatieff visited LUC The Hague on Thursday, November 25th. He was touring the Netherlands to promote his new book The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in…

Leiden archaeologists have been digging into the municipality of Oss’s past for 50 years now and students have gained their first experience of fieldwork there. What is the result of half a century of research and teaching? Archaeologist Richard Jansen and his students take us to the largest excavation…

Launch your own start-up!

From how litter spreads to which languages are spoken in Leiden and The Hague: over 50 interesting, surprising, complex and entertaining questions were sent in for the Citizen Science Project to mark our 444th anniversary.