From the workload to sustainability: the University Council helps decide on important topics. In the University elections – from 9 to 13 May – you can vote for who will represent you on the Council. Three questions to the three lead candidates of the staff parties: PhDoc, Universitair Belang and Leidse…

Aukje Nauta's professorship at Leiden University has been extended for another five years. She will further research how connectedness in the workplace helps people to be their full self and perform better. Her conviction: for a healthy work culture, we need to be willing to feel a bit more ashamed…

‘Space Antenna LISA will open an unprecedented window on the Universe,’ says astronomer Elena Maria Rossi. The mission will be the first one to detect Gravitational Waves from space. These can tell us more about the beginning of our Universe and the formation of black holes. With an NWO grant of twelve…

Cells in our bodies are often threatened by errors in our own proteins. The FLOW consortium, comprising scientists from various institutions including Leiden, is poised to meticulously map out for the first time how cells control proteins, correcting or removing faulty ones. This endeavour holds promise…

The Gravitation programme NETWORKS has been awarded a COFUND grant of 3 million euros. Half of this comes from the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, with industry partners paying the other half. Of the fourteen new PhD candidates, two will join Frank den Hollander's research…

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

Who will be affected by certain chronic diseases, and who will not? For 30 percent that depends on heredity factors, whereas no less than seventy percent is explained by external factors. A Dutch research consortium receives 18 million euros from the prestigious Zwaartekrachtsubsidies to study these…

As of April 2022, Mark de Rooij has been appointed SAILS Professor AI and Data Theory at the Institute of Psychology. This position will enable him to contribute to the goal of the interdisciplinary programme: to build on and expand the current expertise on AI within Leiden University, working from…

Over 1600 astronomers and space scientists will gather online from 29 June until 3 July for the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS). The virtual meeting will also host NAC 2020, from 1 July until 3 July: the 75th Conference of the Royal Netherlands Astronomy Society (NAC).

How are supermassive black holes born? That is the question astronomer Elena Maria Rossi is trying to answer. But how do you investigate something you cannot see?

A peer educator intervention can give pupils more knowledge and awareness about their LGBT peers, and sometimes also a more positeve view. This is the subject of Marieke Kroneman's dissertation. Defence on 15 September.

An endoscopic camera was used to record images of reused medieval fragments on the inside of book bindings from the 16th and 17th centuries. The unique images were made as part of the project ‘FragmEndoscopy: An Innovative Way to Discover Hidden Heritage inside Early Modern Book Bindings’, funded by…

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

New ways of working like working from home can have a positive impact on a person’s career, but only when their superior supports their choice. Researcher Maral Darouei will defend her PhD thesis on sustainable careers on 9 June 2020.

Of the 17 Rubicon grants that NWO recently awarded, three have gone to researchers at Leiden University. They can spend a longer period of time doing research at an institute abroad.

Astronomer Henk Hoekstra has been appointed Professor Observational Cosmology at the Leiden Observatory with effect from 1 August.

Researcher Daan van der Vliet, together with colleagues from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Leiden University and Utrecht University, has discovered an important mechanism that may be linked to severe cases of multiple sclerosis (MS): the brain contains large numbers of abnormal immune…

On February 2nd the book Beelden zonder weerga appears, written by professor in science history Dirk van Delft and biochemist Ton van Helvoort. They describe the rich history of electron microscopy, which comes to a conclusion in the final chapter with the current state-of-the-art ESCHER microscope…

Bright explosions appear all over the radio and gravitational-wave sky. This dynamic side of the universe which has just been discovered, can be mapped by self-learning machines. The National Science Agenda granted 5 million euro’s to CORTEX, the Center for Optimal, Real-Time Machine Studies of the…

On 28 February, Professor E.W. Meijer, member of Leiden University’s Board of Governors, was appointed Commander in the Order of the Dutch Lion.

Leiden astronomy Master's student Arend Moerman has received an A+ for his thesis research on the simulation of chaotic interactions of three black holes. The simulations, which he carried out together with his Leiden and Oxford colleagues, show that lighter black holes tend to slingshot each other…

A team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists have directly imaged a giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star. Why this planet is so massive, and how it got to be there, is still a mystery. The researchers will publish their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

An international team of astronomers, including Professor Koen Kuijken, has published a series of online articles presenting the first results of a major search for dark matter. Never before have researchers been able to chart so precisely the characteristics of groups of galaxies and their dark matter.…

Professor Renata Kallosh (Stanford University), one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, will be this summer’s Lorentz Professor at the Leiden institute for theoretical physics. Her main areas of interest are cosmology and string theory. She studied physics in Moscow, where she also obtained…

Alessandra Silvestri, a cosmologist at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION), has been awarded an NWO Vidi grant for understanding the expanding universe. A growing number of theories explain why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, while more and more relevant observational data is pouring…

Elena Maria Rossi is fascinated by black holes. Her appointment as a professor was a long-held wish, partly because there are so few female professors in her field. ‘My appointment is also a milestone for the Leiden Observatory.’

On Friday April 6th, Leiden University organizes its biannual try-out day. We pay a visit to Physics and Astronomy, which saw their student numbers almost quadruple over the past decade.

On Wednesday September 26th, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll will give an Ehrenfest colloquium. It is part of a lecture series that has been running since 1912 and was founded by physicist Paul Ehrenfest.

Astronomers want to understand the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day, and what the future will hold. In Leiden they focus on two key questions: ‘How did stars and planets originate’ and ‘How were galaxies and black holes formed in the young Universe?’ A new generation of telescopes – just…

JUSTREMIT is an ERC-funded project that brings together political theory, ethnography, and security studies in an interdisciplinary study of remittances and global justice.

Computers are capable of making incredibly accurate predictions on the basis of machine learning. In other words, these computers can learn without intervention once they have been pre-programmed by humans. At LIACS, we explore and push the borders of what a revolutionary new generation of algorithms…

Pushing the boundaries of quantum theories – that’s exactly what the physicists at Leiden University excel at. Researchers in Leiden are launching eight new quantum research projects as part of the Quantum Limits consortium.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

The ability to collect and interpret huge quantities of data has become indispensable to society and academia. Leiden University is a knowledge and expertise centre for data science that places the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

Cosmologists have many possible models for the Universe, of which only one can be true. A new flowchart will eliminate some of them when two specific Universe features are accurately measured. Publication in Physical Review D on 7 November.

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

On June 10, Michelle Achterberg received the prize for best dissertation from the Dutch Neurofederation, the network of Dutch neuroscientists, for her thesis 'Like me, ore else...'. Achterberg obtained her doctorate cum laude from the Gravitation Program 'Samen Uniek' of the Leiden Consortium on Individual…

With a starting grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for promising young researchers, Eiko Fried aims to develop a personalised early warning system, that will reliably forecast depression before it occurs. Fried (Clinical Psychology) talks about this WARN-D, promising to radically transform…

PhD defence

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

For the first time, we’re seeing what Euclid sees. The telescope’s initial observations have provided a wealth of new information about our universe. But according to cosmologist Alessandra Silvestri, this is just the beginning. The research helps us gain a deeper understanding of the past, present,…

For medical research, researchers often recreate tissue in the lab. Organ-on-a-chip technology emulates organs, right down to the blood that flows through them, thus creating a realistic test model for drugs or research into disease processes. Researchers from the LUMC are coordinating an NWO Gravitation…

The Joan van der Waals colloquium is an ongoing bi-weekly lecture series.

Leiden professor Ineke Sluiter was appointed president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 1 June. She was presented with the gavel by her predecessor Wim van Saarloos.

For the second year in a row, the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society will take place online, from 28 June to 2 July 2021. Also this year, the Leiden Observatory is hosting the online event. More than 2250 participants have registered for this conference, a record number.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2019, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.