In light of climate change, it is crucial to determine whether plant species can adapt to future climates to avoid extinction. Plants adapt to various conditions by altering their functional traits, such as leaf size or photosynthetic rate. Some traits appear linked and vary together between species,…

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.M. van Ruitenbeek, Prof.dr. R.M. Tromp

Promotor: P.J.J. Hooykaas, Co-Promotor: E.J. van der Zaal

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…

This dissertation is about Bayesian learning from data. How can humans and computers learn from data?

Healthy aging is one of the prime goals in today's society and atherosclerosis is among the greatest causes of morbidity in elderly. Cardiovascular disease patients receiving treatment are often of advanced aged and have an aged immune system, which limits translating experimental findings to the pa…

The first steps are made in personalised cancer vaccination strategies, which aim to induce a more specific immune response with fewer side effects. The activation of cytotoxic T cells is crucial for an effective immune response.

A complex community of microbes develops in the infant gut shortly after birth. We call this community the infant gut microbiota. The microbiota influences the health of the infant, which makes the composition and function of the infant gut microbiota an important topic to study.

This thesis focuses on protoplanetary disks: flattened structures of gas and dust around young stars in which planets are expected to form and grow.

Membrane fusion is a vital process in living organisms and is mediated by zipper-like proteins.

A modern ship design process is subject to a wide variety of constraints such as safety constraints, regulations, and physical constraints.

Throughout the history of computer science, a major challenge has been how to assert that software is free of bugs and works as intended. Software bugs can lead to serious negative impacts on any software system. Throughout the main body of the thesis, we implemented a series of studies on exploring…

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-promotors: A.I. Yanson, L.B.F. Juurlink

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

Microscopic insight on lipid-based nanomedicine in vivo remains limited to the perception of the knowledge that could be obtained: if we interpret only what we see, then we only believe to know. Although believing to know encapsulates an undefined amount of uncertainty in the exploration of lipid-based…

Inactivating mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes predispose to several types of cancer.

Hydrogen fuel cells are expected to be pivotal in the energetic transition towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. However, their industrial scalability is severely hindered by the high cost and degradation rate of platinum catalysts, one of their key components. Addressing this…

Green hydrogen is produced via a process called water electrolysis. During electrolysis water is split into oxygen and hydrogen.

This dissertation presents the synthesis and evaluation of antibody recognition for various capsular polysaccharide (CP) fragments of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).

In this thesis, we study different curved single crystals because of the diversity of surface structures across their curvature.

Promotores: Prof.dr.G.R. de Snoo and Dr. R. Heijungs

Over the last decades, aviation safety has improved strongly. As a downside, airline pilots do not have as many opportunities to develop through experience the competencies that they need in critical situations.

Promotor: Roeland M.H. Merks

The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) reduces vehicle emissions to combat climate change. EVs raise concerns regarding the production of lithium-ion batteries and related emissions; while batteries can also provide energy storage services for the electricity system.

Promotor: Prof.dr. V. Icke, Co-Promotor: T.I. Madura

There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, and ultimately experiments are needed to verify or falsify these interpretations.

The energy system is at the heart of two of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: decreasing CO2 emissions to meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement while fulfilling the growing energy demand associated with the economic aspirations of a growing world population.

Tomography is a powerful technique to non-destructively determine the interior structure of an object.Usually, a series of projection images (e.g.\ X-ray images) is acquired from a range of different positions.

The function of TLRs in innate immunity has aroused worldwide attention soon after its discovery. Because of the broad functions of TLR2 in innate immunity, the drive for the development of TLR2-targeted vaccines or therapeutic treatments has accelerated in the last decades.

In this thesis, the research focuses on the properties of dark matter and dark matter haloes and how they connect with the galaxies we can observe in the Universe.

β-Lactamases are enzymes that can break down β-lactam substrates, such as antibiotics, preventing the use of these antibiotics for the treatment of various infectious diseases. However, some compounds, β-lactamase inhibitors, can block these enzymes allowing for possible treatments using a combination…

This thesis focuses on enhancing predictions of central nervous system drug exposure using the LeiCNS-PK3.0, a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model.

Hospital pharmacies face significant challenges: the demand for sterile drug reconstitutions is increasing, while specialized personnel remain scarce. Automation offers a potential solution, but its practical implementation in hospitals is still unclear.

In this thesis we will explore the use of fuzzy systems theory for applications in bioinformatics.

Including modelling as part of software development appears to have various benefits.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.L. van Hecke

Promotor: Prof.dr. D. Bouwmeester

In most applications, electrocatalysts exhibit a large surface area to volume ratio, for example using nanoparticles.

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water

Climate change is one of the largest challenges faced by humanity. To combat this research into alternatives to fossil fuels is ongoing. Dihydrogen is considered a good alternative fuel, since its burning only forms water.

Promotores: S.F. Portegies Zwart, E. M. Rossi

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. den Hertog

Chemical-induced organ toxicity is a major concern in the development and use of chemicals, including drugs, pesticides, industrial chemicals and cosmetics. In the last decades, the onset and progression of chemical-induced organ toxicity has been linked amongst others to perturbation of mitochondri…

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg, Co-promotor: A.W. van der Vaart, B. de Smit

Promotor: J.W.M. Frenken

This thesis investigated miniaturized mass spectrometry (MS)-based analytical methods to address challenges in analyzing biomass-restricted biological samples.

This thesis studied in depth the energy use and CO2 emissions of the industrial sector in China.

Promotor: Koen Kuijken Co-promotor: Henk Hoekstra

Promotor: M.K. Richardson, Co-Promotor: F. Witte

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.