News
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New professor of Theoretical Physics: ‘The problems I study can come from anywhere in society’ 26 February 2024
The financial sector, supply chains and ecology. Not necessarily topics you might associate with physics, yet it’s exactly what new professor Diego Ga...
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New professor Luca Giomi creates his own physics of living systems 19 February 2024
Swarms of drones, pedestrians or the cells in your body. Those are all examples of active matter: materials whose building blocks can move autonomousl...
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A first in the lab: a tiny network that is both strong and flexible 15 February 2024
Daniela Kraft's group has succeeded in creating a network of microparticles that is both strong and completely flexible. This may sound simple, yet th...
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Meet the professor: ‘Can my sister be prosecuted for stealing my eraser?’ 08 February 2024
On the university’s birthday, professors traditionally teach a class of 10 and 11-year-olds during Meet the Professor, and this year was no different....
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Why do birds flock? Shedding light on collective motions in heterogeneous populations 26 October 2023
Electrifying plastic beads in a laboratory setup creates flocking behaviour similar to that observed in birds. And if you mix beads of two sizes, they...
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Studying ferritin: ‘we hope this will eventually give more insight into Alzheimer's’ 10 October 2023
Exactly how Alzheimer's disease develops is not well understood, but an imbalance of iron in the brain might just play a role. Martina Huber of the Le...
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From forming embryo to cancer metastasis: the significance of collective cell movement 21 September 2023
Against all expectations, the most common tissue in our bodies behaves differently at different length scales. That’s what physicist Luca Giomi discov...
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Corrugated plastic unveils a new design principle for programmable materials 20 September 2023
Corrugated plastic turns out to be exemplary of a new class of ‘multistable’ metamaterials that can reversibly change shape. This insight can lead to ...
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A piece of rubber can't count. Right? 03 July 2023
A block of rubber that can count to ten and even remember the order in which it is pressed. Physicists Martin van Hecke and Lennard Kwakernaak (Leiden...
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A quirky block of rubber as a calculator 30 May 2023
PhD candidate Jiangnan Ding explores how you can design a thick slab of rubber in a way that it might act as a mechanical computer bit. This so-called...
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Rubicon grant for Leiden physicist: why do leaves of a tree always grow in the same shape? 13 April 2023
PhD candidate Ludwig Hoffmann will spend two years at Harvard University in the US thanks to a Rubicon grant he won on April 11. Using theoretical mod...
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The career choices of cells 16 December 2022
How does an embryonic stem cell decide if it becomes a heart cell or a kidney cell? That’s the question computational biologist Maria Mircea studied f...
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Can we live longer? Leiden physicist makes discovery in protective layer in genes 12 September 2022
With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key ...
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Daniela Kraft appointed professor of Experimental Physics 19 August 2022
Daniela Kraft and her research are a familiar fixture at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). Both have been awarded fellowships, grants and freque...
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Physicists from Leiden help create world’s smallest Rembrandt 05 July 2022
Museum De Lakenhal is displaying the smallest work of art in the world: a 3D-printed statue of Rembrandt van Rijn, made by sculptor Jeroen Spijker and...