Responsible AI for science and a strong and resilient society.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

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…

PhD defence

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) offers bachelor and master level education in computer science at Leiden University. We are known for our scientifically based education and for our open atmosphere.

Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) are essential for modern healthcare delivery, yet their development faces significant challenges including heterogeneous data formats, regulatory compliance, and the growing demand for AI-driven decision support.

The curriculum of this bachelor’s programme gives you an understanding of artificial intelligence and data science with a solid basis in computer science. Both artificial intelligence and data science are broad disciplines that require essential and foundational underpinnings.

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

Leiden heritage expert Sjoerd van der Linde is carrying out research on the heritage of the Caribbean region. This research forms part of the international Nexus 1492 project on the consequences of colonisation for the Americas. ‘We first have to find out what the local population wants.'

Lecture

The Sanquin blood bank gathers data on every donation. Around 720,000 donations are made every year. ‘That generates a mountain of highly valuable data,’ says Leiden PhD candidate Marieke Vinkenoog.

Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert (200 BC to 800 AD)

In this dissertation (titled: Exploring the Synergies between Transfer in Reinforcement Learning and Procedural Content Generation) we explore how the two research fields named in the title, namely Transfer in Reinforcement Learning (TRL) and Procedural Content Generation (PCG) can synergize togethe…

You can find the Digital Lab on the ground floor of the Huizinga building (room: 0.09) on the Leiden University campus in Leiden. The Digital Lab is part of a collection of Humanities labs designed for staff and students who require a place to work, experiment, and find support for their digital res…

If we want to build robots and computer systems that are not only smarter but also possess more social skills, we first need to find out more about how humans interpret information. Max van Duijn and Tessa Verhoef conduct research at the intersection of cognitive science and AI.

In 2017 Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof defended her dissertation on Early Iron Age elite burials of the Low Countries at the Faculty of Archaeology. Out of 36 applications from ten different countries, her dissertation was awarded the Prix Européen D’Archéologie Joseph Déchelette on June 15th.

Workshop

eLaw organises a range of impactful conferences bringing together experts from law, technology, and society to discuss major developments in the field.

eLaw at Leiden University leads Europe in exploring the intersection of law and digital technologies.

What types of construction materials are used in the Global South, where are they, and what levels of societal services do they support? How will material use evolve under different development pathways and paradigms? What are these materials' environmental and societal impacts now and in the future,…

The Faculty of Medicine

Lecture

Data Science

This interdisciplinary project applies data science techniques to qualitatively and quantitatively visualize the interaction between the University and the city of Leiden (Town&Gown) from 1575 onwards. One of the possible angles for follow-up research is diversity, especially from the international…

The Cognitive Psychology Unit has two main research lines, which focus on basic cognitive (neuro)science and applied cognitive psychology.

The Faculty of Law

Molecular Physiology is a research group at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry dedicated to the design, synthesis and application of chemical tools to study important biological and biomedical questions. The group is headed by Prof. Dr. Mario van der Stelt and includes the research lines of Assistant…

Psycholinguistic research

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

The Kroese-Duijsters symposium will be held in the Gorlaeus Building of the Faculty of Science.

Where did the new generation of antislavery activists get their inspiration to organize in large-scale pressure groups?

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Foundation for Industry (FIND) brings together 5 universities with 10 labs, 11 Dutch companies, ranging from start-ups to multinationals, and 2 knowledge institutes to pave the way for a new wave of AI-based automation that helps the Dutch industry strengthen and keep its international competitive advantage…

While acknowledging prominent legal-philosophical debates, this project proposes a radically different approach to provide insights into the concept of the rule of law.

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in Medieval European History, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent.

Understanding how data derived from wearable technology can be used to identify effective changes in behaviour that are likely to result in health improvements

Our programmes are known for our scientifically based education and for our open atmosphere.

Within the two-year Astronomy master’s programme, you can choose from seven specialisations, ranging from fundamental or applied astronomy research in cosmology, instrumentation or data science, to combinations of astronomy research with education, management or science communication.

Our programmes are known for our scientifically based education and for our open atmosphere.

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

The 3rd International Workshop on Klinefelter Syndrome, Trisomy X, and XYY will be held at The Academy Building, Rapenburg 73, Leiden. It is situated in the city center, close to hotels, restaurants and attractions.

The MSc programme Computer Science offers five specialisations corresponding to the research focus areas within the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science. If you would like to become a qualified teacher in Computer Science or combine our studies with science communication, you can choose one…

Our programmes are known for our scientifically based education and for our open atmosphere.

The Computer Science and Education specialisation consists of 120 European Credit Transfer System (EC) points and consists of a computer science component (60 EC) and an education component (60 EC).

On this page, you will find the recordings of the Tuesday Talks since April 2025. Recordings of the precursor to the Tuesday Talks, This Week’s Discoveries, are also available here.

Digital Archaeology is concerned with digital data for for archaeological research, and the computational methods and tools required to collect, analyse and manage it.

Born in Europe roughly 100 years ago, quantum physics brought forth a veritable technological revolution through semiconductors, lasers, fibre optics, and many other technologies that are today ubiquitous in our lives. Now, during the second quantum revolution, Europe can take the lead once more in…