Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

Search engines are getting better at answering our questions. And chatbots are increasingly likely to search the internet for relevant sources. ‘Search engines and chatbots will become more closely entwined’, says Professor Suzan Verberne.

ICT

Plants are extraordinary biochemists and produce a plethora of valuable specialized metabolites (i.e. natural products), including some of our most important medicines. In my lab we want to understand specialized metabolite biosynthesis on a molecular level to improve cultivated plant systems and advance…

Joost Visser is professor of Large Scale Software and Data Science at Leiden University, Program Manager of the Master in ICT in Business and the Public Sector, and Head of the LIACS Software Lab. Previously, Joost fulfilled several R&D leadership positions at the Software Improvement Group (SIG) and…

I am associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science. I work on a variety of cyber security topics, ranging from security risk management and threat modeling to mobile security and secure software development. My main goal is to make organisations more secure by improving their…

Franco Donati’s research focuses on the expansion of data availability on the environmental impacts of products and technologies, and on the development of tools and methods for circular economy scenarios analysis. He pursues these research areas by employing software and data development methods, and…

My research focusses on the development and application of genetically engineered model systems, including mouse models of (BRCA1-associated) breast cancer and human induced pluripotent stem cell models for chemical hazard characterization. In my current position, I combine these research interests…

Anita Liao (M.Sc.) is a PhD student at the Division of Drug Discovery & Safety.

ᅟ

Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and the Erasmus University Rotterdam have worked together for many years on numerous aspects of teaching, research and valorisation. In 2012 this collaboration was formalised in the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities strategic alliance.

There are a number of scholarships available for research and internships abroad.

From the first semester of 2026, Leiden University and Universidad Diego Portales (Santiago, Chile) will launch three online virtual exchange programmes. The themes are: political analysis, tensions surrounding Indigenous peoples in Latin America, and the securitisation of borders.

Suzan Verberne is professor of Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science at Leiden University and a member of the interdisciplinary research programme Society, Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences (SAILS).

Want to build a strong set of skills for your future? As a Science student, you have free access to plenty of support and resources.

The universities of Delft, Leiden and Rotterdam are working together to show their students what artificial intelligence (AI) means for their own field. Three AI minors will start in the 2022 – 2023 academic year and will answer questions such as: ‘How best can you use AI in your research discipline?’…

Leiden-Delft-Erasmus is introducing three new minors this year: Space Missions, (Re)imagining Port Cities: Understanding Space, and Living Education Lab. Marja Verstelle, Project Manager for Teaching at Leiden-Delft-Erasmus, talks about the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration for the new generation…

What are the costs involved in studying abroad and how can you finance your stay? Avoid unexpected expenses by researching financial matters thoroughly in advance.

Collaborating in drug discovery and health research was the goal of a visit to the Leiden Bio Science Park on 14 May by a Swedish delegation including His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden. The delegation visited Leiden University’s Faculty of Science.

René Kleijn holds an MSc in chemistry and a PhD in Industrial Ecology both from Leiden University. He is now an associate professor at Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University.

50 years ago Lauterbur published the basic principle of MRI. Sine then MRI has become more expensive. Professor Andrew Webb describes what is needed to make MRI available for everybody.

Having served on the Executive Board for over nine years, the last five of which as Rector Magnificus, Hester Bijl will leave Leiden University at the start of next year. In a new step in her career, she will become Rector Magnificus on the Executive Board of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)…

Saskia van Otterloo works as a policy advisor on climate adaptation at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in the Netherlands. She graduated in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology and development sociology. How does her knowledge of anthropology help her in her job…

Ten Leiden students have received a prize from the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW). They were nominated by their degree programme. Who are these students?

Sustainability researchers can play an important role in the energy transition. But what if their partners are not (yet) sustainable and science itself has adverse effects? This is the subject of an online talk by researcher Thomas Franssen on 16 December with a discussion afterwards. ‘Clean energy…

In the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge, students from across the globe build and race boats powered by sustainable energy. Leiden public administration student Damiaan Bertrams has entered with a team from Delft University of Technology.

Research

Costanza Franceschini discusses the Sea-ing Africa project, offering unique anthropological research opportunities in Ghana and Morocco for Masters students.

Students and staff from Leiden University are protesting in The Hague on 25 November against the billions in cuts to higher education. ‘The cuts are a terrible idea and we want to show why’, says Claire Weeda from WOinActie. ‘Research and teaching are essential to society.’

"Climate citizenship” explores how adapting environments to climate change can change the way people interact with each other and with government. It focuses on nature-based or 'green' climate infrastructure projects that make use of natural entities or dynamics. With an ERC grant, anthropologist Andrew…

Presentations, city tours, themed cafés and information fairs − there was plenty to discover on the Bachelor’s Open Day last Saturday. Around 6,000 prospective students and 4,000 parents visited faculties in Leiden and The Hague to soak up the atmosphere and imagine how it would be to study at Leiden…