Proving a quantum computer to be quicker than a normal one is one step closer. After a breakthrough in speeding up classical algorithms, researchers Vedran Dunjko and Casper Gyurik showed that only one quantum algorithm could beat its classical counterpart. They discuss their discovery in Quanta Mag…

Hiring commercial consultancy firms by (local or regional) authorities remains controversial and it is at the centre of attention. This was previously revealed in an investigation carried out by Dutch television programme ‘Nieuwsuur’. Dutch news platform Binnenlands Bestuur also sheds light on this…

IBL-researchers revealed in a new study that insects are successful on land because their eggs became protected against desiccation. An extraembryonic membrane in the egg, the serosa, helped insects to make the transition from water to land.

Fourteen bachelor’s and master’s students are representing Leiden University in this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). Their plan: to create a kit that can be used to quickly identify infectious diseases in case of an outbreak.

Nature publishes an article on a paradoxical discovery in superconductivity. Physicists are searching for superconductivity at high temperatures so that less cooling is needed in for example MRI machines. News & Views article by Prof. Jan Zaanen in the same issue of August 19th.

As a result of two attacks in Germany and one attack in France within only one week, fears of new terrorist attacks in Europe have reignited. In France a radicalised police agent stabbed and killed four people. In Germany a man from Syria drove his car into a line of cars wounding sixteen people and…

Chrissoula Tzanetea is a PhD student in the ERC granted research project 'An Empire of 2000 Cities: urban networks and economic integration in the Roman empire', directed by Luuk De Ligt and John Bintliff (Archaeology).

Voters sent a clear signal in the recent Dutch provincial council elections with the 'monster' victory for the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB). This sign of ‘social resistance’ has consequences for the policy on nitrogen emissions, according to Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Local…

North Korean detention camps are no different from Nazi prison camps. But as long as the country remains economically isolated, international criticism will be ineffective, writes North Korea expert Remco Breuker in the opinion section of Dutch newspaper NRC on 21 February. Breuker advocates using the…

Joris van der Voet’s article “Organizational Decline and Innovation in Public Organizations: A Contextual Framework of Cutback Management” won the 2019 Camilla Stivers Award for best article in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance.

It was time for a celebration in the Faculty Club on 11 December. Twenty driven lecturers were awarded their Senior Teaching Qualification by Vice-Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl.

The most recent edition of the journal ‘The Theory and Practice of Legislation’ contains a contribution by Jelle But, Demy Jongkind and Wim Voermans.

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.

Coffeeshop licences may be issued temporarily and reissued after this period has expired. This follows from a ruling by the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State in the appeal lodged by the mayor of Roermond municipality against the Court's April 2021 ruling.

In the world of Ancient Greece the interpretation of supernatural signs was a versatile tool to facilitate decision-making. This is the central hypothesis of the PhD dissertation of historian Kim Beerden. Defence on 14 February.

We are pleased to announce the Program for the “Third International lsmaili Studies Conference: Histories, Philosophies and Communities” (ISC2021), organized by the Leiden University Shii Studies Initiative. This year, ISC2021 will be held virtually on Zoom from Friday, August 6 to Tuesday, August 10,…

Students awarded the highest scores to Leiden University and the Radboud University Nijmegen. These are the findings of an annual survey by Elsevier into the best study programmes in the Netherlands. Elsevier Magazine has a weekly readership of half a million, making it one of the most iinfluential…

The ROBUST consortium, which is the initiative of the Innovation Center for Artificial intelligence (ICAI), has received 25 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to strengthen fundamental AI research. The Leiden interdisciplinary research programme SAILS is part of ROBUST.

Join our Faculty photo contest ‘FSW Memories’. Send your photo + story befóre 25 October 2019.

The Dutch cabinet will allocate a total of 40 million euros extra for institutions providing youth protection and youth rehabilitation over the next four years. Local councils must make the same amount available. Will that be enough to solve the problems?

The Leiden University Green Office is pleased to announce its Spring Poetry competition, on the theme: (Environmental) Guilt!

It's never too early for students to be smart about preparing for the job market. This year Leiden University is launching new initiatives to improve the transition from university to work. The new awareness campaign - CareerTime - is starting on 29 September with career stands at the faculties.

On Monday December 17th the ILS 2.0, SOLID project will hold an afternoon Symposium on ‘Challenges to European Integration: welfare states and free movement in the EU’ from 11.45 – 16.30. The symposium will take place in room A.014 at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building (Steenschuur 25) of Leiden Law Scho…

Theoretical physicists research a special class of particles; Weyl fermions. They have found them to exhibit paradoxical behavior, in contradiction to a thirty-year old fundamental theory in electromagnetism. A possible application is a new kind of electronics—spintronics. Publication in Physical Review…

Reseachers of the Institute of Environmental Sciences Leiden (CML) have contributed to a debate in the Journal Nature over whether lions in Africa can only be saved with dollars and fences.

Although fighting the culture of top-down education and stimulating lecturers’ confidence to adapt courses to local context priorities is no easy job to complete in three years, the “SLEEI inheritance” already has three main components.

Three projects affiliated with the university will receive grants from the Leids Mediafonds (Leiden Media Fund ed.). The money is to be spend on creating a journalistic production in collaboration with a local media partner.

This year, Leiden University is organising the 34th Award Ceremony of the World Cultural Council (WCC). Who will be the prize winners this year?

Leiden University computer scientists Yu Liu, Yanming Guo and Michael Lew are a step closer to their ultimate goal: search engines with visual recognition. Their publication of a new algorithm for fusing multi-scale deep learning representations has been received with great enthusiasm. No other algorithm…

On 29 January, the military administration in Myanmar sent a representative to the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat, marking the first time that a representative from Myanmar has attended a high-level ASEAN meeting in over two years.

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.

Researchers from the Department of Tax Law were lead authors of a report on corporate taxation and digitalization for the World Economic Forum.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations (UN). The world looked a lot different then than it does now. It is therefore important that the UN moves with the times. Together with experts from the Stimson Center, Joris Larik , Assistant Professor at Leiden University…

Gijs van der Velden has one of the best study results in his first college year of all science studies. With that, he won the Young Talent Incentive award and received 500 euros of the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (KHMW). The biology student remains quite nonchalantly. ‘Of course,…

The successor of assessor Marleen van Dorst has been appointed: from September 2019, Bas Schaalje will be the assessor for one year. The master student ICT in Business and the Public Sector wants to make sure that students feel heard by the Faculty.

Twenty-five young people from all over Europe have come to the Netherlands in the week of the Dutch election to act as election observers. They will learn about Dutch politics and observe in polling stations whether the voting is taking place in line with the rules. Two of them are stationed in Leiden.…

What are the benefits for us of collaboration with Chinese partners? What sparks off Leiden researchers' interest in collaborating with colleagues in China? Leiden University shows in three short films what joint projects are like.

The book ‘Forty years of Leiden Environmental Science’ is available in digital format (PDF). It relates to the history of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML).

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO allocates nearly € 19.5 million to a Dutch cluster that contributes to the development of an X-ray camera and spectrograph for the new European space telescope Athena. Leiden Observatory is one of the members of the cluster.

This month's news and events by the profile area Political Legitimacy features the announcement of two PhD defences and several interesting seminars and conferences at Leiden University.

On Monday 31 October the Europa Instituut had a special guest lecture by not one, but sixteen leading Russian Human Right Defenders. The Leiden Law School was very happy to host the Russian delegation, at the initiative of the Dutch Consulate General in St. Petersburg.

Four Leiden researchers, who have recently obtained their PhDs, will receive a Rubicon Grant from NWO to conduct research abroad. A total of 22 scientists have received Rubicon Grants. This grant aims to provide young, promising scientists with international research experience.

Researchers from Biomon have used DNA-techniques to find 40 different species of fish in the river Dommel. This technique is capable of detecting more species than conventional methods of measuring.

Physicists understand little about quantum matter, which is a building block of future quantum computers. Theorists have now discovered that black holes with ‘dreadlocks’ harbor a similarly exotic order pattern, which makes calculations on quantum matter easier. Publication in Physical Review Letter…

The Dutch Prize for ICT Research 2021 goes to Felienne Hermans, associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science. She receives the prize for her research on making computer science and programming accessible to a wide audience and for her pioneering role in establishing a new…

Met een openingswoord, een paneldiscussie op de Spaanse Trappen in Wijnhaven en een druk op de rode knop voor het gebouw zelf, is POPcorner The Hague donderdagmiddag officieel geopend door rector magnificus Hester Bijl.

On Thursday 19 September, the first ILS Lunch Seminar of this academic year took place. Clare Fenwick and Ilya Kokorin gave two very insightful presentations in this very well visited edition of the Lunch Seminars.

Lions in West and Central Africa form a unique group, only distantly related to lions in East and Southern Africa. Biologists at Leiden University confirm this in an article published in Scientific Reports.

Physicists have studied the astrophysical neutrino signal as reported by the IceCube collaboration from a different angle with their ANTARES detector. The Milky Way centre was an obvious prime suspect to be a source, but this hypothesis is now only closer to debunked than confirmed. Publication in Physical…

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