About the book

EUniWell –the European University for Well-Being in which Leiden University and six other universities collaborate – is among the consortia selected for funding in the ‘European Universities Initiative’. The alliance will receive funding of 5 million euros from the European Commission.

Open Science Hub, a science education project coordinated by Leiden University, has won the 2021 Portuguese Medal of Scientific Merit for its contributions to community development through science education, research and innovation.

The UN International Law Commission was established soon after the Second World War with the mandate to promote the progressive development of international law and its codification. It is a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly.

What are you going to do for peace and justice? What will your contribution be to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals? And who or what do you need to make sure your idea has impact? Come to Humanity House in The Hague on 21 September.

Professor Nico Schrijver is professor of public international law at Leiden University and currently the president of the Institut de Droit international /International Law Institute, the most prestigious international law institute which was established in 1873 and which for the quality of its work…

Within the scope of innovating and connecting – the theme of our new Strategic Plan – I paid a visit to Brussels last week. It is important to give Leiden University a face in Brussels and to show our expertise, on Africa for instance.

Although there is considerable evidence that nature in the city is beneficial to both people and animals, we still do not have an overall picture of those benefits. To rectify that, a Leiden PhD candidate and a student – armed with a cargo bike – are using The Hague as a life-size laboratory.

The Executive Board has appointed Ineke Sluiter and Arnold Tukker as distinguished professors at Leiden University.

The Faculties of Leiden University have developed several themes for research cooperation between Leiden University and its Indonesian partners.

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

Your local city park may be improving your health, according to a new paper led by Leiden environmental scientist Roy Remme. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Remme and his colleagues describe how access to nature increases people’s physical activity—and therefore overall health—in…

Laura Heitman has been awarded a VIDI grant for her innovative drug research. Heitman strives to optimize a drug’s binding kinetics at its target in order to ultimately fight diseases effectively. She even pleads for a paradigm shift in drug discovery.

Plant biologist Pingtao Ding, assistant professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), has received a 2.4 million European grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This ERC Starting Grant for promising young researchers allows him to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which plants resist…

Researchers need to work in specialized environments when they work with dangerous bacteria and viruses. These microbes spread easily, so only in labs with a high biosafety levels they can be studied. Unfortunately, to look at the microbes properly, expensive microscopes are needed that are not always…

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

Lecture

'It gave our team a big boost to hear that our work was valuable,' says medical chemist Elmer Maurits about the moment they won the Venture Challenge. With their company Iprotics, they want to develop a drug that can better treat patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancers. 25,000 euros of prize…

How can mega sand nourishments, such as the Sand Motor, be designed and managed for optimal ecosystem services provision ?

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Our institute aspires to be the center of excellence for strategic and quantitative research and education on sustainable use and governance of natural resources and biodiversity. We have two distinct research programmes: Environmental Biology and Industrial Ecology. The department of Industrial…

Public funding for fundamental research is essential for innovation and the development of new medicines. This is demonstrated by Professor Science Based Business Simcha Jong and his colleague Hsini Huang after studying US federal funding restrictions for stem cell research under President George W.…

Earlier this year, the public voted environmental scientist Paul Behrens Discoverer of the Year 2018. Behrens is an interdisciplinary scientist who wants to understand our impact on the planet. ‘Unfortunately, we are not doing enough. Huge changes are underway and we’re running out of time to avoid…

Lecture, Part of Open Lectures Serie

Leiden biotech startup Azafaros has successfully completed a funding round, raising 25 million euros of investments for developing treatments of rare metabolic disorders. The company holds exclusive license to a library of novel patented compounds discovered by experts from Leiden University.

As a graduate of the Faculty of Humanities, there are unlimited possibilities. Do you want to know more about the sectors and jobs Humanities' graduates end up? Click on the name of the alumna/alumnus to read their story!

Research into the evolutionary backgrounds of our diets can help us make the right choices in diet, health and lifestyle.

Conference

Hanne Cuyckens, Michiel Dam, Anja van der Voort, Daan Weggemans and Paul Gobée have joined the Leiden University Teachers’ Academy. Lecturers from the academy can exchange experiences, develop themselves and share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the university, for example through the…

Free playtime and physical play are of great importance to children's social development. That is the main conclusion of innovative research by developmental psychologists and computer scientists from Leiden University.

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Prof.dr. V. Meyer (Technische Universität Berlin)

PhD defence

A consortium of research groups, including that of LACDR professor Erik Danen, will use an NWO Perspective grant of nearly five million euros to build a universal standard for organ-on-chip models. They aim to stimulate the application of these chips in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry. Danen…

Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) has been in existence for almost six years and will be entering its second phase in 2019. What course will the alliance take, what opportunities are out there and what is its mission? LDE Magazine spoke with Carel Stolker, rector magnificus of Leiden University and a member…

Before patients can take a pill, scientists often spend years in the lab developing and testing a candidate drug. That often includes experiments with laboratory animals. As head of the rodent facility, Ilze Bot and her colleagues ensure that these experiments are conducted in an ethically responsible…

Leiden Law School is working hard to improve sustainability both in education and teaching within the faculty, at our campus and in its research. You can read all about the university's vision and ambitions, recent developments in this area, our current sustainability projects and how students and…

High-quality education, research involving multiple faculties, collaboration between universities and central government funding to make all this possible: these were the topics covered in a working visit of the Standing Committee for Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to the Association of Universities…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Sustainability issues are often highly complex problems, which can only be understood if you combine knowledge on both natural systems and the communities which need to deal with the issues. Throughout your 3-year Science for Sustainable Societies programme, you learn to analyse complex sustainability…

Leiden University and four other Dutch universities will appoint 51 PhD candidates to conduct solution-oriented research for and with the African continent.

From 1 August 2018, Alanna O'Malley was appointed as Chair of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, focusing on the ‘lesser-known actors’ of the UN: women, the youth, the agents of informal diplomatic networks within the UN and actors from the Global South. This Special Chair has been created…

On 26th and 27th February, the South African Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor will visit Leiden University as honorary Oort Visiting Professor of Astronomy for Development. She will give a ceremonial lecture on Astronomy for Development in the Academiegebouw on 26th February and lead…

Which genes are involved in woodiness and associated traits such as drought tolerance, flowering time, stem elongation, life span, and plant herbivory, and how do these gene regulatory pathways overlap?

Bernet Elzinga (Clinical Psychology) is one of the seven scientists from the Leiden University who has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands. The funding will enable her to do research for the next five years…

Lecture, Workshop

Comparing individual health data with group data allows doctors to give personalised advice and patients to learn from one another's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, Professor of Applied Data Analytics, shows how personal data can have a valuable predictive function. Inaugural lecture 24 February.

According to the LUMC, patients experience 30% fewer serious side effects when medication doses are tailored to their DNA.

The human trafficking of Eritrean refugees is a booming business, where money is made with smuggling people, but also using violence, hostage situations and even torture. Modern communication methods like money transfer via mobile phones play a vital role in this, conclude professor Mirjam van Reisen…