On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2024, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Host-Microbe Interactions is one of the four research themes of the Institute of Biology Leiden.

To support interdisciplinary research on today's world-scale changes and governing challenges, the GTGC programme has awarded a number of seed grants to scholars at Leiden University collaborating across different faculties and institutes.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2021, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Leiden University is involved with various grants and prizes stimulating initiatives in the field of diversity and inclusion.

In our research protein translocation from Agrobacterium into yeast and plant cells is studied to obtain fundamental insights in the translocation process

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

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?

Human impact and plant subsistence in Dutch wetlands during the Late Mesolithic and Early and Middle Neolithic (5500-3400 cal BC)

A plant that takes metal from the ground all by itself: a natural way to mine or to clean the soil. PhD student Roderick Bouman (Hortus Botanicus Leiden) described a new plant species from Sabah, Borneo, which can be used to extract nickel. In an open access article in Botanical studies, he and the…

Just like every other organism on Earth, plants’ ultimate goal is to survive and reproduce. In order to achieve this, they must make trade-offs between where and how to allocate their finite set of resources. Whether they put their resources and energy into their growth, reproduction or maintenance,…

Professors Jos Raaijmakers (NIOO) and Gilles Van Wezel (IBL) received an STW Perspectief- grant of €3 million from the Dutch Technology Foundation and several supporting companies.

Project Announcement: ‘EU human-centered digital transformation’ (2023 – 2027) funded by Leiden University Starting Grant In Spring 2023, Simona Demková and Daniel Mândrescu from the Europa Institute secured the new Leiden University Starting Grant, valued at 240,000 EUR, for a collaborative project:…

The mycorrhizal symbiosis is among the most widespread species interactions on Earth⁠. This thesis focuses on orchid mycorrhiza, a unique mycorrhizal type that has caught scientists’ attention for centuries⁠.

Dr. Kirsten Leiss and Prof. Peter Klinkhamer received 900.000 euro’s from “Stichting Toegepaste Wetenschappen (STW)” and the company “Rijk Zwaan” to develop plants that are resistant to thrips, a major agricultural pest all over the world.

Harvesting rice from the same field, without planting new rice plants? A discovery may bring this scenario closer. Leiden scientists have discovered a gene that allows annual plants to grow after flowering, instead of dying. Publication on 13 April in Nature Plants.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, a world-wide effort by the botanist and plant protection community, is making considerable progress in protecting plant diversity around the world, a new report says. The Hortus botanicus Leiden is one of the partners of the project.

The LHSC booster grants awarded are described below. The summaries below are aimed at the general public. For further detail, please contact the researchers in question.

The Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) is an internationally oriented institute for research and education in biology.

All kinds of reasons have been put forward for why plants apparently fail to make maximum use of the available light. None of these reasons can explain why after two billion years of evolution they are not black, like industrial photovoltaic solar cells. Are we missing something?

Producing offspring of a crop without sowing and that is even bigger than the parent plant. According to Leiden researchers this can be achieved by overstimulating a single gene that rejuvenates cells, including bringing them back to the embryonic phase.

The MicroSOS project is designed to bring together academic and industrial partners with different expertises to address challenges that agriculture is facing due to climate change and invests in the development of microbiome-based solutions towards more sustainable agricultural practices.

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. As in previous years the LUCDH received a large number of excellent grant applications for Research and Personal Development funds. Congratulations to the recipients of this year's research award…

Work officially started on Schilperoortpark at the Leiden Bio Science Park on Wednesday 6 March. Town councillor Paul Dirkse and Vice-Chancellor of the Executive Board of the University Martijn Ridderbos planted the first tree together with Cas Schilperoort, grandson of Professor Rob Schilperoort, the…

Science, Leiden Institute of Physics (LION)

Besides the Hortus being a beautiful place where visitors can relax and learn more about plants, we also facilitate botanical research. Thousands of plants are cultivated for research purposes in our greenhouses. These include tropical orchids, ferns, the soursop family (Annonaceae), the dogbane family…

PhD at Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens - France

Breeding for resistance becomes more and more important because we want to reduce the use of pesticides. A fast and cheap alternative can be to make use of morphological or chemical markers.