Physics professor Jan Aarts starts a collaboration with chip manufacturer Intel to perform fundamental research in low-power, cryogenic computing.

Three major research projects involving Leiden scientists have been awarded a grant from NWO’s Gravitation Programme. The projects are on innovation processes, organs-on-chips and quantum software.

In this thesis we explore machine and deep learning approaches that address keychallenges in high dimensional problem areas and also in improving accuracy in wellknown problems. In high dimensional contexts, we have focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

The Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) is the coordinating partner in the Qluster research project, which was awarded a 2,9 million euro FET Open grant by the European Union. The three-year project, which started on 1 December 2019, aims to produce many photon entanglement to aid quantum communication…

The government is investing 646 million euros and has set aside a further 3.5 billion to drive economic growth in the Netherlands. Much of the National Growth Fund will be used for scientific innovations. Leiden University is involved in three of the projects.

A piece of corrugated rubber can function as a simple computer, displaying memory and displaying the ability to count to two. Leiden physicists describe the computing rubber in the journal PNAS. ‘Simple materials can process information, and we want to find the principles behind that.’

We study the interplay of topology and geometry with chirality for several passive and active systems, employing both analytical and numerical methods.

Master Computer Science in Leiden nr.1 according to Elsevier

Leiden University and the Beijing Institute of Technology will be collaborating in the area of computer science teaching and research. One of the first outcomes of this collaboration will be a joint four-year bachelor's programme. Willem te Beest, Vice-President of the Executive Board, and Professor…

An international committee has assessed computer science research at all Dutch universities in the period 2009-2014. For its computer science research, Leiden was awarded the ‘highest’ mark (1) for relevance to society.

In this thesis, topics relating to the optimization of high-throughput pipelines used for imaging are discussed. In particular, different levels of implementation, i.e., conceptual, software, and hardware, are discussed and the thesis outlines how advances on each level need to be made to make gains…

Electrons in a crystal lattice have properties that may differ from those of a free electron in vacuum.

Promotor: K.E. Schalm, Co-promotor: S.S. Lee

Uncertainty and noise are frequently-encountered obstacles in real-world applications of numerical optimization. The practice of optimization that deals with uncertainties and noise is commonly referred to as robust optimization.

Leiden prof. emeritus Grzegorz Rozenberg is honoured with the first life time award in formal languages, a research area of theoretical computer science. During a small ceremony at his house, he received a statue that was specially made for the occasion.

NWO has awarded a €392k Projectruimte grant to physicists Koenraad Schalm and Jan Zaanen to study ‘strange metals’. These materials are alleged to follow the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics even at everyday length scales.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.V.J. Linnartz, Co-Promotores: H.M. Cuppen, S. Ioppolo

Heterogeneous catalyzed processes are highly significant to the chemical industry. Dissociative chemisorption (DC) of molecules on surfaces is always considered as a step with a high degree of rate control for heterogeneous catalysis.

Vera van Noort has been appointed Professor in the field of Computational Biology within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology from the 1st of February 2017. Van Noort’s expertise is in bioinformatics and her research focuses on the computational analysis of large-scale biological data…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 goes to David Thouless, Michael Kosterlitz and Duncan Haldane for theoretical discoveries in the field of topological materials. Haldane spent part of 2008 in Leiden; he is the 14th Lorentz Professor to win a Nobel Prize.

Visualizing the internal structure is a crucial step in acquiring knowledge about the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Among the most powerful techniques for exposing the interior of cultural heritage objects is computed tomography (CT), a technique that computationally…

The STW project Energy Efficient Computer-Brain Interaction (principal investigator for LIACS: dr. T.P. Stefanov) has been granted. Funding for LIACS: 1 PhD student + travel/equipment budget, project duration: 4 years.

In 2018, the number of mobile phone users will reach about 4.9 billion. Assuming an average of 5 photos taken per day using the built-in cameras would result in about 9 trillion photos annually.

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

Computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology CAA95.

From July 22nd to August 1st, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

From 16 to 26 July, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

The van Exter group has an extensive history of prior research in classical and quantum optics. As former part of the group of Han Woerdman, we have studied topics as diverse as:

In the thesis we demonstrated an 85% state transfer efficiency between two mechanical modes coupled to a common optical mode via stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in the classical regime. We also showed possibilities to manipulate quantum states of the mechanical modes via STIRAP.

LIACS aims at being a diverse and inclusive research institute. To reach this goal, two instances are working on addressing diversity related issues.

The Just Peace Dialogues were a set of meetings for public deliberation of key aspects of building peace in today’s world. The dialogues were held across seven days at the heart of the Just Peace Festival (16 - 22 June 2025).

In July 2022, Leiden hosted the ESOF conference.

Simulating human language understanding on the computer is a great challenge. A way to approach it is to represent natural language meanings in logic, and to use logical provers to determine what does and does not follow from a text. What logic is best to use and how natural language meanings are best…

On a structural level, the properties featured by a majority of mechanical metamaterials can be ascribed to the finite number of soft internal degrees-of freedom allowing for low-energy deformations.

In online games conflicts between players may arise. Novin, Bos, Stevenson and Rieffe investigated factors that may explain why some adolescents react more angrily than others in this type of situation. In their realistically designed gaming environment, the (pre-programmed) fellow player suddenly started…

Advanced sensing techniques require graphene with high quality and well-controlled surface chemistry.

Former PhD, Bachelor and Master students of the Van Exter Lab

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported this week in 'Science'.