Although bacteria are usually invisible to the naked eye, they are the silent force behind many processes in our daily lives.

The Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems (CEEDs) consortium developed novel integrated technologies that support experiencing, analysing and understanding of very large datasets.

A European consortium has provided a disruptive technological breakthrough to allow the discovery and characterization of novel enzymes for industrial biotechnology. The technology will open the way to more efficient industrial processes such as in the biofuel, animal feed and paper and pulp industr…

The molecule calix[4]pyrrole, synthesised in the group of associate professor Sander Wezenberg at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, has been voted ‘Molecule of the Year’ by the readers of C2W Mens & Molecule. Wezenberg received the award from editor Daniël Linzel.

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Prof.dr. J.C.T. Eijkel (Twente University)

Irene Battisti is the discoverer of the year 2019. The physicist won the C.J. Kok Public Award for her research into microscopy and superconductors.

Discover budding creators, artists and researchers at the Night of Discoveries art and knowledge festival. And many researchers from Leiden University are taking part.

The increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics necessitates the discovery of new medicines.

The ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance combined with the low discovery of novel antibiotics is a serious threat to our health care.

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

Research report January 2020. Supported by the lectorate ‘Music, Education and Society’, research group ‘Making in Music’, Royal Conservatoire The Hague

Since 2019, the Foundation for Austrian Studies organises an annual lecture in cooperation with the Institute for History.

In this thesis new methodologies are developed for the detection and systematic study of radio sources in the early universe. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, the activity of supermassive black holes, and the final phase transition of our universe:…

Antibiotics are a class of medicine most people take for granted. But pathogenic bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to our antibiotics, and this poses a great challenge for future treatments. There is thus a great societal need to identify new molecules that can address new targets and be…

The application of compliance archaeology techniques such as mechanical large scale excavations where large quantities of data are gathered in relatively little time (and relatively inexpensively) and a firm post-excavation research phase yielded a whole new body of archaeological evidence.

On this page the programme and sessions can be found.

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.

It was the Night of Discoveries on Saturday 16 September: a summer encounter between art and science. Leiden researchers from various disciplines inspired the public with their quest to understand our world.

Grants awarded to molecular physiology research

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

Every person on earth can read another person’s mind. Not in the way psychics or witches do, but by putting themselves in the shoes of others and considering how they perceive the world. This kind of empathy greatly facilitates communication and interaction. Max van Duijn studies this phenomenon to…

What does Leiden physicist Wolfgang Löffler think about the award of the Nobel Prize for physics to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland?

Improving healthcare with our scientific discoveries: that is the goal of pharmaceutical research at Leiden University. And there’s a lot involved in that. Our research starts with the discovery of the effect achieved by a particular substance, and sometimes continues all the way through to the development…

Leiden was ‘European City of Science’ in 2022. Leiden University looks back on a fantastic year with activities, lectures and workshops full of science and curiosity.

Last January, the education assessors of the different study associations chose Fouzia Lghoul-Oulad Saïd of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) as teacher of the year. Her passion for teaching extends beyond her classes, according to the students who nominated her: ‘ She is always ready…

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.

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 lysosomal β-glucosidase named glucocerebrosidase (GCase) is a retaining β-glucosidase that hydrolyzes the glycosphingolipid glucosylceramide (GlcCer) to ceramide and glucose at acid pH.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Schmidt, Co-promotor: Dr. ir. S. J.T. van Noort

Autophagy is a fundamental degradative process, maintaining cellular homeostasis and functions in host defense against intracellular pathogens, including mycobacteria and Salmonella.

This thesis explores the theoretical and observational properties of distant massive galaxies that harbour active black holes in their centres and shine brightly at radio wavelengths.

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, Co-promotor: M. van der Stelt

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

Promotor: A. Achúcarro Co-promotor: A. Boyarsky

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

Materials with strongly correlated electrons show some of the most mysterious and exotic phases of quantum matter, such as unconventional superconductivity, quantum criticality and strange metal phase.

Despite being the object of intense study, embryonic development has been difficult to model due to a number of reasons. First, complex tissues can be comprised of many cell types, of which we probably only know a subset.

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

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

The chemical and structural heterogeneity of toxoid vaccines makes their analysis challenging. However, detailed insights on a molecular level can be obtained by mass spectrometry.

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

Research in the Lars Jeuken group focusses on redox-active proteins and membranes enzymes, aiming to understand bacterial respiration at the molecular level for the development of antimicrobials and semi-artificial photo-synthetic cells.

Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

The symposium is open to all registered participants and consists of a one-day programme and a poster session.

Scientists, including our faculty colleague Dr. Mike Field, studying an exceptionally well-preserved woolly rhinoceros have revealed details of what Britain's environment was like 42,000 years ago. The beast's remains were discovered in Staffordshire in 2002, buried alongside other preserved organisms…