Emeritus-hoogleraar moleculaire astrofysica Ewine van Dishoeck is benoemd tot Citation Laureate door Clarivate, een bedrijf dat onderzoeksdata analyseert. Daarmee beschouwt Clarivate haar als invloedrijke wetenschapper met het kaliber om een Nobelprijs te winnen.

‘Wadden Sea Sounds’ is the name of a new project launched by the Waddenvereniging in collaboration with researchers from Leiden University and the University of Groningen. The aim is to find out how underwater noise affects marine life in the Wadden Sea. Read more:

Researchers from Leiden have developed a promising TB vaccine that users can self-administer via a special patch. This could be beneficial for countries with limited health services, says PhD candidate Malene Neustrup. Read more:

On October 14th, Kim Bonger (@kimmb1.bsky.social) will present her exciting research in our LED3hub at the @leidenscience.bsky.social Tuesday Talks to the Faculty. If you are interested, make sure to register: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

🐯The #Quantum Safari — an interactive journey that reveals how quantum is already part of our everyday lives, and how much more is possible. This Saturday, we’ll be at the #NachtvanOntdekkingen at the Oude Sterrewacht in #Leiden, starting from 7 PM @leidenscience.bsky.social @unileiden.bsky.social

Nine students dove into a challenging iGEM project this summer. With their idea, they aim to make antibodies more efficient - and in the meantime learn at least as much about collaboration, creativity and their own future. Read more:

📢 The House of Quantum in #Leiden has officially opened! At LION, we are very proud to host this first location of the HoQ outside of Delft! This new hub brings #quantum to the health, bio- and med-tech sector at the Bio Science Park! @leidenscience.bsky.social @unileiden.bsky.social edu.nl/aq6fa .

Micro- and nanoplastics cause stress to crops such as lettuce and carrots, PhD candidate Laura Julia Zantis found. This can lead to reduced growth and a lower nutritional value. Biodegradable plastics have this effect too, likely because of chemicals they release during degradation.

A new class of polymers has been used in patients for the first time. The compound is the first new drug solubilising agent in decades. Introduced in 2014 by chemist Matthias Barz from Leiden University, it offers a unique alternative to current options. Read more:

Predicting the collective behaviour of systems is no easy task. But there’s a theory that scientists have been using for decades to do just that: the theory of Gibbs measures. Last week, mathematician Mirmukhsin Makhmudov earned his PhD for refining this very theory. Read more:

Personalised treatment for patients with atherosclerosis. That is what the researchers of the AtheroNeth consortium are working towards. The Dutch Heart Foundation has awarded €6 million to this research project, of which €340,000 will go to Leiden. Read more:

Leiden Observatory has achieved a rare feat: two of its research teams have been awarded prestigious ALMA Large Programmes, allowing them to study how galaxies formed and evolved in the early Universe using cutting-edge telescope observations. Read more:

Lorentz Medal is awarded to professor Charles Kane of @upenn.edu on the 11th of December 2025, Robbert Dijkgraaf (@knaw-nl.bsky.social) will hand over this prestigious award for theoretical physics during our Symposium '100 Years of Spin'. Read more: edu.nl/aycdg

Looking for a #PhD in #medicinal #chemistry and #chemical #proteomics focused on #drugdevelopment for #infectiousdiseases? We have a vacancy!! Come join our interdisciplinary team @leidenscience.bsky.social & and help develop new approaches to treat mycobacterial infections 😀 tinyurl.com/3srxfr55

At the age of six, Barbara Gravendeel already knew what she wanted to be: a biologist. The seed was planted in the garden of her childhood home: an old orchard surrounded by a large hedge. Since 1 May, she has been the scientific director (prefect) of the Hortus botanicus in Leiden.

One used 3D cell models to study colorectal cancer, while the other used machine learning for more efficient blood donation. For these achievements, Marieke Vinkenoog and Simon Christian Hansmann were awarded the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award on Tuesday 2 September. Read more:

The more data from cancer research we pool, the better we can search for new treatments. But how can we keep patient data safe when sharing it? Leiden researchers will tackle this challenge in a major European project.

Marc Koper, Professor of Catalysis and surface chemistry, has been awarded the EuChemS Gold Medal 2026. The prize is awarded every two years and recognises outstanding achievements in the field of chemistry in Europe. Read more:

Our dean, Jasper Knoester, opens the Academic Year at @leidenscience.bsky.social of @unileiden.bsky.social. Great to see him highlight the importance of the faculty priority themes including that of Drug Discovery and Developing of our @led3hub.bsky.social. www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/science/l...

A great mini symposium on #cancer research today at @leidenscience.bsky.social organized by the #MCBIM department of Sylvestre Bonnet. Petra Heffeter and Guy Ron talked about diverse aspects of cancer #diagnosis and #treatment. #ChemSky #ChemBio #DrugDiscovery

Eerste astro-nieuws van vandaag. Over een uurtje nog meer supergaaf nieuws. Allebei met astronomen van @leidenscience.bsky.social

Experiment: student Alicia Cai relied solely on AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude for supervision while writing her thesis. It was only after she had finished writing it that Professor Bas Haring, who devised the experiment, assessed her thesis.

An international team of astronomers led by Matus Rybak (Leiden University) has proven, thanks to accidental double zoom, that millimetre radiation is generated close to the core of a supermassive black hole. Their findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

If you are interested in #chemoproteomics, #immunology and #DrugDiscovery, here is your chance to work as a #PhD candidate with an amazing mentor (@mads-chem.bsky.social) within the @led3hub.bsky.social. www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/vacancies... #Chemsky #ChemBio @leidenscience.bsky.social

Researchers from Leiden University analysed almost 30 years of communication on astrobiology. News articles proved most speculative, especially via quotes from scientists. Especially exoplanet research is often accompanied by high expectations about extraterrestrial life, they write in PLOS One.

She develops algorithms that outperform leading optimization techniques and can be applied in many fields. For this work, Niki van Stein and her team have won the GECCO Humies Award. ⬇️

From medicines from snake venom to supercrops and the origin of words. Thirteen researchers from Leiden University will receive Open Competition XS grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

#Activematter research by Marine Le Blay, Joshua Saldi & Alexandre Morin from @unileiden.bsky.social published in @natphys.nature.com ! Read more: edu.nl/btmta. @leidenscience.bsky.social #physics

What if AI doesn’t just support engineers, but actually works alongside them? A large consortium, including Leiden University, gets 3.7 million euros. They will explore novel synergies between engineers and AI, in industrial engineering design areas such as automotive engineering. Read more:

Give organisms like plants and animals the freedom to move, interact and meet their own needs, and they will thrive on their own, says Professor Geert de Snoo. Our interference often ends up doing more harm than good. Read more:

Green spaces boost mental health—especially in busy cities. A new study from Leiden and Stanford University reveals how nature benefits urban well-being and offers low-cost ways to make city life healthier for everyone. Read more:

What do you do when you get the chance to meet Nobel Prize winners in your field? You say ‘yes’, of course! Two young chemists from Leiden had the opportunity to attend the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany. They share what the experience was like.

Astronomers and surgeons from Leiden are collaborating with industry to develop an optical instrument that delivers faster, more accurate imaging of tumour tissue and abnormal blood flow during surgery. The underlying technology comes from research into detecting exoplanets.

Large pairs of planets thought to orbit each other without a star, do not exist after all. That conclude Simon Portegies Zwart and Erwan Hochart, after extensive computer modelling and simulations. What the double dots seen by the James Webb Space Telescope are, remains a mystery.

What began as a PhD project has grown into a website with 120,000 unique visitors each year. With the platform OpenML, researcher @janvanrijn.bsky.social is contributing to open science, aiming to make machine learning more transparent, accessible, and fair.

When you stretch an elastic band, it gets longer. But imagine a material that actually becomes shorter when you pull on it. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Yet that’s exactly what physicists from Leiden University, AMOLF, and ARCNL have managed to create. @leidenphysics.bsky.social

5 Veni grants for Leiden Science! Congratulations to Leindert Boogaard, Qinyu Chen, Guadalupe Cañas Herrera, Dirk van der Hoeven, and Jana Volaric with your Veni grant from NWO. www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025...

International researchers have, for the first time, pinpointed the moment when planets began to form around a star. This finding marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation and opens a window to the past of our own Solar System.

Astronomers led by Simon Portegies Zwart used simulations to reconstruct how three stars were ejected from the star cluster R136, 60,000 years ago. The analysis reveals that five stars were involved in the event in the Tarantula Nebula.

@sebastianpomplun.bsky.social and Hermen Overkleeft have been awarded ERC Proof of Concept grants. These grants, each worth EUR 150,000, will help the grantees in their efforts to bridge the gap from basic science to real-life applications.

Can you prove whether a large quantum system truly behaves according to the weird and wonderful rules of quantum mechanics — or if it just looks like it does? In a groundbreaking study, physicists from Leiden, Beijing and Hangzhou found the answer to this question.

The Dutch consortium NanoMedNL has received €6.7 million to accelerate the development of nanomedicines together with patients. Researchers from Leiden University play a key role in the project.

Should we be growing rice and building materials instead of grass for cows? From invasive crayfish to cultural heritage and groundwater levels: ten graduating students explored the future of the Groene Hart, the rural region just outside the cities of Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden where they study.

Leiden researchers have discovered an enzyme that helps bacteria feed on everyday plastics. This common enzyme could play a crucial role in future research and eventually in addressing the global plastic crisis. The study was published in Nature Communications.

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker from Leiden University has imaged a young gas giant exoplanet near a 12-million-year-old star. The planet is orbiting a star at which planet formation has finished, while the same-aged companion star still has a planet-forming disk.

As of 1 July, toxicologist Mirjam Luijten from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) starts as professor by special appointment at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR).

How can we manage our natural resources more sustainably? That’s the key question behind the United Nations’ International Resource Panel. The panel recently welcomed a new member: René Kleijn, Professor of Industrial Ecology at Leiden University. We asked him three questions about his new role.

Why does a medicine work well for one person, but cause side effects in another? Research by Laura de Jong shows that it’s not just our DNA that matters – other medicines and illnesses can also affect how our bodies respond.

How are supermassive black holes born? That is the question astronomer Elena Maria Rossi is trying to answer. But how do you investigate something you cannot see?

Is it possible to measure subtle oscillations caused by dark matter moving through the earth? A Dutch American physicist team found a new route to the possible first measurement of dark matter. They suspended a microscopic magnet inside a superconducting enclosure, cooled to near absolute zero.