Barrier function is the natural role of the skin. The lipid matrix present in the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum is important for this function.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

Bacteria have the ability to alter their morphology in order to adapt to changing environments.

Het onderzoek in de cluster Algebra, meetkunde en getaltheorie slaat bruggen tussen abstracte theorie en de wereld van algoritmen en toepassingen.

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

Voltammetry plays a crucial role in modern scientific research by offering valuable insights into the electrochemical properties of materials, with wide-ranging applications in fields such as materials science, energy storage, corrosion studies, and sensor development.

Promotor: A. Kros

Mycorrhizas are symbiotic associations between soil fungi and most plant species.

This thesis describes a study from both a theoreticaL and an experimental point of view.

In this thesis, we aimed to better understand the underlying mechanisms involved in TNBC progression and metastasis formation and discover new targets to reduce breast cancer related deaths.

There is accumulating evidence for an increase in severe global drought events. In particular, Europe experienced several severe droughts in 2003, 2015, and 2018 (unprecedented in the past 2,110 years). Such droughts have caused serious and far-reaching impacts on terrestrial ecosystems.

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-promotoren: M.F.E. de Jeu, S.D. Silvestrov

Within the field of astronomy, understanding how galaxies grow and evolve from the Big Bang to the present day is a challenging and complex question.

This thesis explores different avenues to develop insurmountable antagonists for CC Chemokine Receptors, such as CCR1, CCR2 and CCR5.

In light of climate change, it is crucial to determine whether plant species can adapt to future climates to avoid extinction. Plants adapt to various conditions by altering their functional traits, such as leaf size or photosynthetic rate. Some traits appear linked and vary together between species,…

Promotor: T.H. Oosterkamp

Healthy aging is one of the prime goals in today's society and atherosclerosis is among the greatest causes of morbidity in elderly. Cardiovascular disease patients receiving treatment are often of advanced aged and have an aged immune system, which limits translating experimental findings to the pa…

Mechanical forces are known to play an important role in bacterial colonies. In this dissertation, we study the self-organization at various stages of growing bacterial colonies, and focus on the mechanical effects of cell growth.

Tin electrodeposition applications have rapidly evolved in the past 25 years.

Membrane fusion is a vital process in living organisms and is mediated by zipper-like proteins.

This thesis describes the design, characterization and application of dextran based crosslinked network.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-Promotor: L.W. Chatrou

This thesis describes the role of pollution, specifically neonicotinoid insecticides, as an actor of the ongoing biodiversity decline.

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are mechanical waves that travel along the surface of a material and find many applications in modern technologies due to the ease of excitation on piezoelectric substrates via interdigital transducers (IDTs).

The main goal of the research described in this thesis was the development of new photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT) ruthenium(II) complexes bearing a non-toxic photolabile ligand.

New drugs for use as tuberculosis (TB) treatment are needed due to the constrains of classical antibiotics against TB and the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains, making TB a harder and harder disease to treat.

Promotores: G.W. Canters, T.J. Aartsma

Inactivating mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes predispose to several types of cancer.

This thesis investigates opinion dynamics on random graphs through the lens of the voter model, a classical interacting particle system used to describe how consensus emerges in networks.

My PhD project studies how the temporally sequential Hox gene expression is regulated during head-tail patterning of the frog embryo.

Understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems is one of the most fundamental challenges in astronomy. To directly image and study young exoplanets and the circumstellar disks they form from, dedicated high-contrast imaging instruments are built.

There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, and ultimately experiments are needed to verify or falsify these interpretations.

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

This thesis introduces a relational interaction model and a practical tool for describing, visualising and generating interactive dialogues.

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

This thesis is a (biased) journey through very different topics in astrophysics: quasars and new populations of active galactic nuclei, gravitational waves from merging black holes, and protoplanetary discs around young stars.

This thesis involves three topics: benchmarking discrete optimization algorithms, empirical analyses of evolutionary computation, and automatic algorithm configuration.

With the help of quantum mechanics, digital quantum hardware may be able to tackle some of the problems that are too difficult for ordinary computers. But despite these expectations and the ongoing effort of the research community, reliable quantum computers are not yet realized in a lab setting.

This monograph focuses on clustering of objects in high-dimensional data, given the restriction that the objects do not cluster on all the attributes, not even on a single subset of attributes, but often on different subsets of attributes in the data.

Promotores: C. J. ten Cate; M. A. Ainslie. Co-promotor: W. Slabbekoorn

One of the key limitations of the direct imaging of exoplanets at small angular separations are quasi-static speckles that originate from evolving non-common path aberrations (NCPA) to which the primary adaptive optics system is inherently blind. The main focus of this thesis is the development and…

The key characteristic of active matter is the motion of an emergent collection (such as a flock of birds), which is driven by the consumption of energy by its active components (i.e. individual birds).

This thesis studies the geometry of representation varieties and character stacks. These are spaces parametrizing the representations of a finitely generated group, typically the fundamental group of a compact manifold, into an algebraic group G.

Promotors: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck, Prof.dr. B. Sendhoff (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

Developing new medicines is one of modern science's most significant hurdles, a process marked by high costs, long timelines, and frequent failures of promising candidates.

In most applications, electrocatalysts exhibit a large surface area to volume ratio, for example using nanoparticles.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E Gittenberger, Co-Promotores: C.H.J.M. Fransen, B.W. Hoeksema

The research described in this thesis focused on the use of bioorthogonal antigens to investigate immunological processes in antigen presenting cells. Bioorthogonal antigens are antigenic proteins produced through recombinant expression in a methionine auxotrophic E. coli strain.

This thesis investigates reactive interfaces in surface science across three domains: heterogeneous catalysis, environmental nanoplastics, and two-dimensional materials.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets. Co-promotores: B. Gravendeel, F. Pupulin