Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

Pandemics, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters... These are real threats, which we cannot ignore. In fact: we need to prepare better for the large-scale crises of the future. Preferably in a way that suits our lifestyle and respects our social values. Over the next ten years, an interdisciplinary…

The first larger quantum computers will soon be available. These computers need new software. Researchers at Leiden University have been awarded a Gravitation grant to develop the necessary software. They will be collaborating with colleagues from other research institutions.

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Van 21 augustus tot en met 8 september zijn de workshops en cursus van de jaarlijkse Summer School on the History of the Book van het Allard Pierson en de vakgroep Boekwetenschap. Drie weken lang is er elke werkdag een cursus, workshop of lezing over thema’s die te maken hebben met de geschiedenis van…

Cells in our bodies are often threatened by errors in our own proteins. The FLOW consortium, comprising scientists from various institutions including Leiden, is poised to meticulously map out for the first time how cells control proteins, correcting or removing faulty ones. This endeavour holds promise…

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

Lecture

Lecture

The Gravitation programme NETWORKS has been awarded a COFUND grant of 3 million euros. Half of this comes from the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, with industry partners paying the other half. Of the fourteen new PhD candidates, two will join Frank den Hollander's research…

Met groot plezier heeft de Universiteit Leiden van 1 tot 4 november het X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux (AHBx) georganiseerd, met het thema Transhispanismos: contactos y contagios (Transhispanismes: contact en besmetting). De AHBx is een platform in de Benelux dat…

Of the 17 Rubicon grants that NWO recently awarded, three have gone to researchers at Leiden University. They can spend a longer period of time doing research at an institute abroad.

Astronomer Henk Hoekstra has been appointed Professor Observational Cosmology at the Leiden Observatory with effect from 1 August.

Over 1600 astronomers and space scientists will gather online from 29 June until 3 July for the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS). The virtual meeting will also host NAC 2020, from 1 July until 3 July: the 75th Conference of the Royal Netherlands Astronomy Society (NAC).

Lecture, colloquium

On 28 February, Professor E.W. Meijer, member of Leiden University’s Board of Governors, was appointed Commander in the Order of the Dutch Lion.

Bright explosions appear all over the radio and gravitational-wave sky. This dynamic side of the universe which has just been discovered, can be mapped by self-learning machines. The National Science Agenda granted 5 million euro’s to CORTEX, the Center for Optimal, Real-Time Machine Studies of the…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

JUSTREMIT is an ERC-funded project that brings together political theory, ethnography, and security studies in an interdisciplinary study of remittances and global justice.

This event is in Dutch. De Verenigde Naties hebben 11 februari uitgeroepen tot International Day of Women & Girls in Science. De Universiteit Leiden viert deze dag met een open publieksevenement met vrouwelijke topwetenschappers van haar bètafaculteit. Iedereen is welkom vanaf 13:30 uur in het Kamerlingh…

A team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists have directly imaged a giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star. Why this planet is so massive, and how it got to be there, is still a mystery. The researchers will publish their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Leiden astronomy Master's student Arend Moerman has received an A+ for his thesis research on the simulation of chaotic interactions of three black holes. The simulations, which he carried out together with his Leiden and Oxford colleagues, show that lighter black holes tend to slingshot each other…

Elena Maria Rossi is fascinated by black holes. Her appointment as a professor was a long-held wish, partly because there are so few female professors in her field. ‘My appointment is also a milestone for the Leiden Observatory.’

An international team of astronomers, including Professor Koen Kuijken, has published a series of online articles presenting the first results of a major search for dark matter. Never before have researchers been able to chart so precisely the characteristics of groups of galaxies and their dark matter.…

For medical research, researchers often recreate tissue in the lab. Organ-on-a-chip technology emulates organs, right down to the blood that flows through them, thus creating a realistic test model for drugs or research into disease processes. Researchers from the LUMC are coordinating an NWO Gravitation…

Alessandra Silvestri, a cosmologist at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION), has been awarded an NWO Vidi grant for understanding the expanding universe. A growing number of theories explain why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, while more and more relevant observational data is pouring…

Professor Renata Kallosh (Stanford University), one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, will be this summer’s Lorentz Professor at the Leiden institute for theoretical physics. Her main areas of interest are cosmology and string theory. She studied physics in Moscow, where she also obtained…

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

On June 10, Michelle Achterberg received the prize for best dissertation from the Dutch Neurofederation, the network of Dutch neuroscientists, for her thesis 'Like me, ore else...'. Achterberg obtained her doctorate cum laude from the Gravitation Program 'Samen Uniek' of the Leiden Consortium on Individual…

As of April 2022, Mark de Rooij has been appointed SAILS Professor AI and Data Theory at the Institute of Psychology. This position will enable him to contribute to the goal of the interdisciplinary programme: to build on and expand the current expertise on AI within Leiden University, working from…

On Friday April 6th, Leiden University organizes its biannual try-out day. We pay a visit to Physics and Astronomy, which saw their student numbers almost quadruple over the past decade.

On February 2nd the book Beelden zonder weerga appears, written by professor in science history Dirk van Delft and biochemist Ton van Helvoort. They describe the rich history of electron microscopy, which comes to a conclusion in the final chapter with the current state-of-the-art ESCHER microscope…

On Wednesday September 26th, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll will give an Ehrenfest colloquium. It is part of a lecture series that has been running since 1912 and was founded by physicist Paul Ehrenfest.

Computers are capable of making incredibly accurate predictions on the basis of machine learning. In other words, these computers can learn without intervention once they have been pre-programmed by humans. At LIACS, we explore and push the borders of what a revolutionary new generation of algorithms…

Astronomers want to understand the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day, and what the future will hold. In Leiden they focus on two key questions: ‘How did stars and planets originate’ and ‘How were galaxies and black holes formed in the young Universe?’ A new generation of telescopes – just…

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

Leiden professor Ineke Sluiter was appointed president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 1 June. She was presented with the gavel by her predecessor Wim van Saarloos.

For the second year in a row, the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society will take place online, from 28 June to 2 July 2021. Also this year, the Leiden Observatory is hosting the online event. More than 2250 participants have registered for this conference, a record number.

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

What is the influence of non-hereditary factors on our health, such as lifestyle, diet and exposure to harmful substances? The Exposome-Scan project, led by Leiden professor Thomas Hankemeier, has been awarded 3.2 million euros from the NWO Investment Grant Large programme to answer this question. With…

Researchers from Japan and the Netherlands who were previously involved in the discovery of an exoplanet with huge rings have now calculated that the giant rings may persist more than 100,000 years, as long as the rings orbit in the opposite direction to that of the planet around the star. Their findings…

Cosmologists have many possible models for the Universe, of which only one can be true. A new flowchart will eliminate some of them when two specific Universe features are accurately measured. Publication in Physical Review D on 7 November.