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…

On 27 and 28 April, Simona Demková participated as a panelist at the conference 'A

At the annual World Computer Chess Championship, chess computers from all over the world compete with each other. This year, Leiden University hosted the event.

The particle accelerator of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, produces large amounts of complex data with high accuracy, as a result of which theoretical predictions also need to be more accurate and faster. With his research team, PhD candidate Ben Ruijl developed very innovative…

Suzan Verberne has been appointed professor of Natural Language Processing at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) from 1 October. Verberne has been at LIACS since 2017 as group leader of the Text Mining and Retrieval group.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has won the NWO Team Science Award after conducting research regarding the authenticity of several “Hugo de Groot’s” bookchests for the Dutch TV series Historisch Bewijs. The team consisted of researchers from the University of Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum and…

The German professor of Information Systems and Statistics Heike Trautmann accepted the Pascal chair this month at LIACS, the computer science institute of Leiden University. Trautmann’s main research areas are evolutionary multiobjective optimisation and data science, in which LIACS is strong as we…

Knots come in all shapes and sizes: mariners and scouts can vouch for this. Sjabbo Schaveling will obtain his PhD on 1 September for a mathematical method to distinguish between all these knots. ‘I flatten them to a pretzel.’

The standard approach to build a quantum computer with Majoranas as building blocks is to convert them into qubits. However, a promising application of quantum computing—quantum chemistry—would require these qubits to be converted again into so-called fermions. Physicists from Leiden and Delft suggest…

PhD student Sung-Shik Jongmans of Leiden University and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica investigated a new programming method to simplify this. On 3 March 2016, he graduated with the exceptional predicate 'cum laude' on his dissertation 'Automata-Theoretic Protocol Programming'. His results are interesting…

AI is playing an increasingly important role in our lives, but that is not without danger. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga at eLaw warns that AI does not pay enough attention to the LGBTQ community.

On 10 May 2021, Melanie Fink and Barbora Budinská published their views on recent developments in the areas of EU regulation of Artificial Intelligence and the Banking Union respectively as Op-Eds on EU Law Live.

What rules should regulate AI, who should make them, and how will they be enforced in the digital arena?

‘Our health is the area that stands to gain most from artificial intelligence.’ The three universities in Zuid-Holland are helping make these gains. Three researchers talk about their collaborative research into AI for health, drug discovery and healthcare in the AI knowledge cluster in Zuid-Holland.…

Conference, seminar

Many of the challenges of our time are too complex to be resolved within the confines of a single discipline. Leiden University is a broad-based university where an incredible number of research fields converge. That makes us the ideal breeding ground for, and practitioners of, interdisciplinary research…

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

Sound Arguments is an innovative laboratory-atelier for creative artists and researchers dealing with sound. Presented by the Orpheus Institute, Ghent (BE), and the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Leiden (NL), Sound Arguments transcends the boundaries of art school or conservatory,…

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

LIACS assistant professor Ben van Werkhoven leads the development of software for optimising graphics processing units. By now, version 1.0 of 'Kernel Tuner' is just around the corner. This milestone shows that the software is ready for serious use.

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

Leiden University is investing 4 million euros in a new Data Science research programme. This is a joint initiative of all the faculties, headed by Dean Geert de Snoo at the Faculty of Science. The programme will focus on Leiden scientific data.

How can you ensure that more experimental drugs reach the finish line? At the moment, only one in twenty cancer drugs that are tested on humans makes it to the market. This is an enormous loss for patients and society. With a grant from the National Growth Fund, Oncode-PACT aims to efficiently select…

The Dick Stufkens Prize 2020 for the best PhD thesis of the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry has been awarded to Dr Mark Koenis. Koenis graduated 21 February with the distinction cum laude on his thesis 'Advanced Spectra Analysis to Determine Complex Structure and Chirality'. He describes…

Twenty years onwards, in a review of an Escher exhibition in Italy, Nature Physics writes about it again: Leiden mathematicians helping Escher out. A reconstruction of how emeritus professor Hendrik Lenstra tracked down a 44-year-old problem.

Governments and public sector organisations consider evidence-based or evidence-informed policymaking as one of the pillars of good governance. That is to say: policies that are informed by scientific knowledge, expertise and evidence. In the research programme 'Power of Evidence', Valérie Pattyn and…

On this page you can find information about previous CCLS events.

PhD defence

Lecture

Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, may be used as an alternative treatment option when antibiotics fail. Leiden researchers have studied the structure and function of a novel bacteriophage that could be used to treat one of the WHO bacterial strains of concern where new treatments are urgently…

Teaching people to recognize subtle, real-world expressions will help them understand and trust others better. The aim of Mariska Kret is to develop an interactive virtual-reality training tool (E-VIRT) for a broad group of users, including patients. Kret provides a brief description of her idea for…

Self-driving cars, surgery robots, and stock market algorithms: the use of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly increasing. What are the opportunities for this development, and what the dangers? The Honours Class ‘Robot Law: Regulating Robot and AI Technologies’ prepares students for the…

Computer scientist Tim Coopmans uses pen, paper and regular computers to simulate the best possible quantum computer. He tells about his research and how this helps make a useful quantum computer a reality a little bit sooner. ‘I hope I will get to see quantum computers contributing something really…

The fact that scientists are increasingly better able to access molecular cell and tissue data also brings with it a new challenge: how can scientists find the information they need for research among the vast amount of data available?

Data science is of vital importance in preventing future outbreaks of viruses, Professor of Data Science Aske Plaat argues. Inaugural lecture entitled ‘Data Science and Ebola’ on 13 April.

Alex Brandsen and Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart, PhD candidates in the Digital Archaeology research group and the Data Science Research Programme, have been awarded a 444 grant by Young Academy Leiden. They are going to use it to hold a session in Oxford on improving collaboration between researchers…

How does it feel to be spied on by robots? Did you know that they too discriminate? Our entanglement with technology makes life easier, but there’s a downside too. Artists and researchers will show all aspects of this in the SAILS online talk show The Future of AI is Human. Join in on Tuesday 15 December…

At the Capstone Conference, Honours College students of the Humanities Lab presented their final projects. In small groups, they conducted research on relevant societal issues – gathering insights from a multitude of disciplines. ‘The aim is to learn as much as possible from each other.’

‘If it rains later, then I’ll take the car.’ In order to reason, we use sentences containing ‘if’ every single day. But how does that work exactly in the Dutch language? Alex Reuneker wrote his 628 page dissertation on the subject. Ceremony on 26 January.

As of 1 June, Serge Fehr has been appointed as Professor Quantum information theory at the Leiden Mathematical Institute (MI). Fehr is employed by Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and as of his appointment works one day a week at the MI. Fehr’s research is focused on quantum cryptology and will…

‘I was very happy and honoured that my thesis was recognised as a valuable contribution to the topic of landscape archaeology.’

Covid year 2021 might have felt somewhat less strange than the year before, but the virus still left its mark on University life and our students and staff. Fortunately there was also room for research, visiting dignitaries and in-person classes. And our social media accounts weren’t only about covid…

With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), care professionals at the LUMC (Leiden University Medical Center) are able to calculate quickly and accurately whether a coronavirus patient has suffered serious lung damage. They do this by putting a CT scan through the AI software of the CAD4COVID-CT p…

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of on average 1.5m euros enables researchers who show potential to start their own project, lead a research team and implement their best ideas.

The Dutch research school IPA has awarded former PhD student Sung-Shik Jongmans with the IPA Dissertation Award 2016. In March of that year, Jongmans received his doctorate degree with the rare distinction ‘cum laude’, describing a new method for parallel programming. ‘I aim to simplify programming…

With the emergence of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, it’s easier than ever to share information. Including disinformation. During his PhD computer scientist Xueqin Chen developed a new way to recognise fake news and predict how messages spread within online social networks…

Computer scientists from Leiden University and the University of Münster describe a new theoretical starting point for approaching difficult optimization problems. They can take into account several criteria simultaneously, instead of just one at a time.

Technology holds so much promise – from self-driving cars to enhanced physical performance from smart implants under the skin. But we should not let ourselves be caught off guard. That is the message of Bart Custers, Professor of Law and Data Science in his inaugural lecture on 21 May. ‘We don’t talk…

An international team of astronomers has published a map of the sky showing over 25,000 supermassive black holes. The map, to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is the most detailed celestial map in the field of so-called low radio frequencies. The astronomers, including Leiden astronomers,…