The Night of Discoveries will take place on 20 September in the area around Hortus botanicus Leiden, the Old Observatory, Pieterkserk, the Academy Building, Old School, the Faculty Club and the PJ Veth Building.

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.

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

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.

Over a seven year period an international team of scientists has mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope. From Leiden, Astronomer Timothy Shimwell and Huub Röttgering, among others, are involved. It reveals an astonishingly…

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…

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-Promotores: T. Reijmers, L. Coulier

Advanced mass spectrometry of glycosphingolipids takes the central stage in this thesis. Investigations focus on characterization of glycosphingolipid metabolism in health and disease with emphasis to the detection and accurate quantitation of known and so far unknown glycosphingolipids and closely…

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

How does the evolution of the archaeological landscape at Son Sard reveal rural settlement patterns on Mallorca, serving as a pars pro toto for Balearic rural archaeology?

In the Research in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences specialisation you will perform research on various topics in the area of Drug Discovery and Development. The programme offers a high level of flexibility and can be tailored to your scientific interests. The major research project is hosted by the Leiden…

Archaeologists from the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden), the Museo Egizio (Turin, Italy) and Leiden University have found the grave of Panehsy, the 'steward of the temple of (the god) Amun', in Saqqara.

LED3 is the combined effort of four excellent institutes of Leiden University. Through joined hands, we are able to give rise to a more effective early drug discovery pipeline. Let us briefly introduce the institutes.

Through his project we will unravel the global regulatory networks that control gene expression in Streptomyces bacteria and allow them to properly respond to major changes in the environment; we will then harness this knowledge to activate and identify novel antibiotics

An integrated approach for the simultaneous prediction of polypharmacology and binding affinity/potency of small molecules.

As of April 1, 2018, Erik Danen has been appointed as Professor of Cancer drug target discovery at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). His discipline is cell biology of cancer, in which he focuses on the mechanisms underlying metastasis and therapy resistance.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

The adenosine receptors are proteins that reside in the extracellular membranes of cells. Activation of adenosine receptors plays a role in many physiological and pathological processes, such as immune responses and cancers.

Supervisor: Andrea Martella

Promotor: C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Co-promotor: Sandra de Weert

Promotores: H.S. Overkleeft; G.A. van der Marel Co-Promotor: B.I. Florea

The Aging and Immunity group is led by Dr. Amanda Foks. In this group we aim to investigate how aged immune cells contribute to atherosclerosis and identify novel therapeutic targets and strategies to extend health span and inhibit cardiovascular disease.

Source: PLoS ONE, Volume 10, Issue 3 (2015)

The research group of Semonti Bhattacharyya at the Leiden Institute of Physics studies quantum transport measurements in Van der Waals heterostructures.