Mimicking photosynthesis to produce bioplastics sustainably and efficiently. Researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) will assess this new approach. ‘An exciting opportunity to explore a new, appealing research topic in a collaboration between…

The three-day conference will be held at the Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo from the 29th of September until the 1st of October 2019 with the title: The Walking Dead II: The Making of a Cultural Geography. It is organized by the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) and Leiden University.

Data and information should be stored in a way that computers can understand, says Barend Mons, professor of Biosemantics at the Leiden University Medical Center and Chair of the High Level Expert Group for the European Open Science Cloud. We speak with him about FAIR data, knowlets and nanopublicat…

In the world of Ancient Greece the interpretation of supernatural signs was a versatile tool to facilitate decision-making. This is the central hypothesis of the PhD dissertation of historian Kim Beerden. Defence on 14 February.

Two students from the Leiden-Delft MSc Industrial Ecology programme have made a carbon footprint calculator for the website www.doemaarduurzaam.nl; the website where the Dutch public broadcasting organisations collect everything broadcasted about sustainability. The carbon footprint calculator allows…

The importance of digitalization has become even more evident during the Corona crisis. Society and the Dutch economy are therefore rapidly digitizing. This calls for a good balance between seizing opportunities and reducing risks.

From 14 to 15 September 2023, Simona Demkova, AI researcher at the Europa Institute, participated in the INDIGO Project Final Conference, where she provided valuable perspectives on the implications of AI for European public law.

Impossible Situations: Concerts in the Making recounts the journey of a group of artists including performers, composers, an architect, a photographer and a sound engineer, as they explore different ways of making music together.

At Humanities, students are the point of focus. They are trained to be critical thinkers, academic professionals and involved citizens. Our lecturers and researchers encourage students to develop knowledge with which they can understand and indicate the major topics in our society. Because everything…

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the Public Management specialisation of Public Administration makes graduates excellent candidates for positions as a public manager, or take on an advisory role as a management consultant or strategic advisor within public organisations.

Artificial intelligence systems are smart. They can recognize patterns better than humans, for example. Yet humans are still very much needed. How can you better steer those AI systems? LIACS lecturer Jan van Rijn wrote a book about this together with a number of colleagues. We asked him a few quest…

Listening to birds and helping science, it is possible. Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) researchers Karan Odom and Katharina Riebel launched a citizen science project to improve the worldwide documentation of female birdsong.

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

Wiebe Ruijtenberg (Law/VVI), Nadia Sonneveld (Law/VVI), Paul van Trigt (Institute for History) and Jasmijn Rana (CADS) have received a KIEM grant of € 10.000 for their project ‘Making up Migrants / Disabled: The pasts, presents, and futures of human classifying’. The grant will be utilised to organize…

International prosecutors, for instance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, investigate particularly serious crimes such as genocide. They decide, among other things, whether or not to prosecute. PhD candidate Cale Davis investigated how prosecutors come to such decisions and will defend…

Rogier Creemers is a lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies. While he looks for challenges in his lectures, in his free time he much prefers to go back to basics and work with his hands.

Issues such as climate change, the depletion of natural resources or social inequality are too complex to be addressed from a single scientific discipline or by a single country. Leiden University has the expertise to bring the resolution of these enormous problems a small step closer.

Urban green infrastructure has the ability to make make cities more sustainable. However, the exact implementation of green infrastructure and the choices that must be made during implementation, are still topic for discussion. In the Future Cities podcast, environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo chats…

Leiden University's interdisciplinary research programme SAILS funds young interdisciplinary scientists working at the intersection of AI and other fields. Researcher Matthijs Westera talks about his experiences working within SAILS and the Leiden academic community.

Studying International Relations and Organisations (IRO) you are building a foundation that will benefit you in your future career, whether as part of an international organisation, or as a journalist or consultant.

What do Political Scientists bring to the table? Which jobs do they take on after their studies? How does Leiden University help you preparing for your career? Find out here.

Terrorist groups adapt to environmental changes to maintain power. This project provides new insights by developing a theory of strategic target selection and using big data analytics and machine learning to test these hypotheses.

Like ants, termites and bees, some bacteria work together as a multicellular group. There is a strict division of labour in such colonies, to make the group more resilient to the outside world. Now researchers have found that some parts of the bacterial colony can take ‘for the greater good’ to a whole…

A group of biology students are working on a solution to the world’s plastics problem by getting bacteria to make biodegradable plastic.

What began as a PhD project has grown into a website with 120,000 unique visitors each year. With the platform OpenML, researcher Jan van Rijn is contributing to open science, aiming to make machine learning more transparent, accessible, and fair.

The Leiden Leadership Programme is going to innovate. After 12 years, the honours track for master’s students will get a new set-up. We asked two of those involved about the ins and outs of the new LLP. ‘You learn what leadership style suits you and how to make an impact.’

The ILS Lunch seminars bring colleagues and students from Leiden Law School together, providing an informal setting to hear what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday 14 February, the first edition of the ILS Lunch Seminar series of 2019 takes place. This…

‘My lectures have to be as enjoyable as possible for the students, even when they're about the drier parts of maths.' Robert-Jan Kooman is one of the nominees for the LUS Teaching Prize.

The importance of digitalization has become even more evident during the Corona crisis. Society and the Dutch economy are therefore rapidly digitizing. This calls for a good balance between seizing opportunities and reducing risks.

No more smelly lorries disposing of building waste or delivering building materials to the centre of Leiden. That’s Leiden University’s ambition for its future renovation or construction projects in the city centre. Electric boats should make the process cleaner and less inconvenient for the people…

The Dutch government will be unable to make wearing face masks mandatory in public spaces in the short term, according to three constitutional and administrative law experts in NRC newspaper, including Wim Voermans.

The aim of Plan S – open access in science – is quite right, says the League of European Research Universities (LERU), of which Leiden University is a member. But the proposed implementation plan will cause too much difficulty for researchers and institutes. LERU has therefore come up with ten recommendations…

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…

How is it that the internet works so well, with billions of users sending millions of gigabytes all together every day? That's because the foundation of the internet is solidly set up. Yet sometimes there are problems on the internet. For example, when certain systems misbehave and disrupt the routing…

Astronomer and science communicator Pedro Russo is awarded the K.J Cath Prize and € 2,500 for his outreach efforts that bring science to the general public. ‘There are so many bright scientists, and so few people communicating about science.’

Scientists need individual photons for quantum cryptography and quantum computers. Leiden physicists have now experimentally demonstrated a new production method. Publication in Physical Review Letters on July 23rd.

For her research, PhD candidate Liselore Tissen put one famous painting after another through a 3D scanner. The resulting reproductions were indistinguishable from the originals. But what does this mean for our interpretation of art?

Theoretical research does not always give us the right solution to a problem in society. This message, loud and clear, is delivered during the final presentations of the Master Honours Class 'Social Innovation in Action'.

Over recent years Leiden University has taken some significant steps forward in innovation in teaching and learning and in diversity. But there is still a lot to be done. These were the comments by governors, lecturers and scholars during the farewell seminar for Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk on 27…