Faculty of Science

Awards and Grants 2025

On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2025, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

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.
The GECCO Humies Awards recognize researchers who demonstrate that AI-developed methods can achieve better results than human experts working by hand. The Leiden team—Niki van Stein, Thomas Bäck, Haoran Yin, and Anna Kononova—received the silver award for their LLaMEA: the Large Language Model Evolutionary Algorithm.
Hermen Overkleeft (LIC) and Sebastian Pomplun (LACDR) received Proof of Concept grants from the ERC. Through the Aziflu project, Overkleeft is investigating a new type of medicine that may be more effective against flu viruses that have developed resistance. With the ExSELence project, Pomplun aims to accelerate and democratise the search for new medicines, making it more accessible to smaller research institutions as well.
Sebastiaan Haffert received the New Horizons in Physics Prize for early-career researchers. Haffert develops techniques for the largest telescopes to search for Earth’s siblings.
Roxanne Kieltyka received an ERC Proof of Concept grant to develop synthetic material for growing manipulated heart tissue.
Sebastian Pomplun received an ERC Proof of Concept grant to transform cancer treatment by advancing the development of HeloMYC.

Four researchers from Leiden Science have received funding trough the NWO Open Competition XS grant. The grants, which amount to a maximum of € 50,000, are intended to support promising ideas and to facilitate innovative and more speculative initiatives. The recipients are Marta Artola Perez de Azanza (LIC), Stephan Hacker (LIC), Dane Marijan (LIC) and Han de Winde (IBL).
Zach Armstrong (LIC) and Ana Monreal Ibero (Leiden Observatory) have received funding through the NWO Open Competition ENW-M. With this grant, they are conducting research into, respectively, the detection of mucus-eating bacteria and the mapping of the complexity of planetary nebulae.
Five researchers from Leiden Science have been awarded a Veni grant by NWO. This grant offers promising early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their own ideas over a period of three years. The recipients are Leindert Boogard (Leiden Observatory), Qinyu Chen (LIACS), Guadalupe Cañas Herrera (Leiden Observatory), Dirk van der Hoeven (MI), and Jana Volaric (LIC).
A Dutch consortium received €6.7 million of the Dutch Reserach Agenda (NWA) to accelerate the development of nanomedicines together with patients. Researchers from Leiden University play a key role in the project.
Marjo de Graauw received a Comenius Teaching Fellowship worth €50,000. With this funding, she aims to De Graauw aims to transform laboratory teaching.
Henk Hoekstra (Leiden Observatory), and Diego Garlaschelli and Subodh Patil (LION), received funding from the NWO Open Competition ENW-M. Hoekstra aims to investigate the physical mechanisms that give rise to specific vortex patterns in the shapes of galaxies observed in the sky. Garlaschelli and Patil are exploring ways to understand the behaviour of very large, complex networks—such as the internet, social networks, or biological processes.
Yamila Miguel was awarded the Pastoor Schmeits Prize for Astronomy.
Thanks to a 4.8 million euro grant from the Dutch Research Council, NWO, a new national research facility for materials at the atomic scale will be established. Semonti Bhattacharyya, Martin van Exter, Sense Jan van der Molen, and Wolfgang Löffler are contributing to the initiative.
As runner-up of the Gratama Science Prize, a prize for young and talented researchers, Sebastiaan Haffert received 2,500 euros.
Joachim van Guyse (LACDR), Konstatinos Migkas (Leiden Observatory), and Julia Villalva received an NWO Open Competition grant. Their research topics are, respectively: Smart drug delivery systems, anisotropic expansion of the universe, and solar energy storage in molecules.
Joost Batenburg and Hazel Doughty were awarded funding from the High Tech Systems and Materials (HTSM) programme. Their research focuses on transforming industrial quality control by developing a new imaging workflow that integrates a ‘3D mode’ into high-throughput systems.
Joop Schaye (Leiden Observatory) has been appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Martina Vijver, Henrik Barmentlo, Alena Gsell, Kat Stewart, and Krijn Trimbos received a grant of 4.18 million euros from the Dutch Research Council NWO. This funding will help upgrade the outdoor laboratories of Leiden University, NIOO-KNAW, Radboud University, and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) into smart and collaborative ‘hubs’.
Jaco Geuchies, Grégory Schneider, Dennis Hetterscheid (all LIC), and Maurijn van der Zee (IBL) received funding for their research project through the NWO Open Competition ENW-M, supporting innovative, high-quality fundamental research within the Natural and Exact Sciences domain.
Five FWN projects received funding through the Dutch Research Agenda. These projects were led by Wolfgang Löffler, Diego Garlaschelli, Evert van Nieuwenburg, Kat Stewart, and Yamila Miguel.
Three chemists from the same department—Sander van Kasteren, Kim Bonger, and Madeline Kavanagh—each secured a ZonMw grant through the ZonMw Open Competition. Their research supports the advancement of fundamental biomedical science and healthcare innovation.
Two consortia, led by Nathaniel Martin and Gilles van Wezel, were each awarded over 1 million euros from the Dutch Research Council and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) to develop solutions to antibiotic resistance.
Alexey Boiarskyi, Ana Achúcarro, Matthieu Schaller, and Subodh Patil received an NWO grant from the NWO Open Competition XL to conduct research on the early years of the universe.
Grégory Schneider and Jan van Ruitenbeek received an NWO grant from the Open Technology Program for research to prove a new technique for unraveling DNA codes faster, cheaper and more accurately.
Jelle Goeman received a NWO grant to develop a mathematical theory that allows many hypotheses at the same time.
Geert-Jan Kroes en Jörg Meyer received a NWO grant for research on dissociative chemisorption reactions on metal catalyst.
Miranda van Eck was appointed as a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities.
Hermen Jan Hupkes received a Vici to develop a framework to describe structures such as rings, spirals and waves.

Mirjam Luijten started as Professor of Human-Relevant Risk Assessment of Chemical Substances by special appointment at the LACDR.
Kim Bongers has been appointed Professor of Chemical Biology at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC).
Alessandra Silvestri has been appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics, specialising in Cosmology, at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION).
Liru Feng won the LION Image Award 2025.
Tom Schreuder has been appointed Director Operations of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden.
Aline Vidotto has been appointed professor of Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics at the Observatory.
Jasper Williams has been appointed as Director of Operations of CML.
Rob van Wijk received the 2024 Teacher of the Year award for his exceptional dedication and innovative methods by which he links theoretical concepts to practice.
Jasper Knoester was reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Science.
Jildau Bouwman was appointed professor by Special Appointment Digital Health and Systems Biology, in specific remote health monitoring.
Barbara Gravendeel has been appointed as the new scientific director of Hortus botanicus Leiden.

PhD candidate Julia Santos was offered a 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, a prestigious research position for astronomers. She will continue her work at Harvard University. Santos aims to bridge laboratory experiments and astronomical observations to study molecular transformations that underpin the formation of planets and organic life.
Marie Depuydt won the C.J. Kok Jury Prize for her thesis on the role of the immune system in arterial calcification.
Marieke Vinkenoog received the Krijn Rietveld Doctoral Societal Impact Award for creating models that use past measurements to predict blood donors hemoglobin level.

Five mathematics students from Leiden University and their coach stood out this summer in Bulgaria at the IMC: the International Mathematics Competition for university students. By the end of the competition, the Leiden team placed thirteenth overall. Several students also received individual prizes: Casper Madlener won gold, while Lars, Lance Bakker and Mads Kok took silver, and Ryan Staal earned bronze.
Sterre ter Haar won the Rachel Carson Graduation Prize for her Master’s thesis on the effects of rising CO₂ levels on the nutrient composition of plants.
Daan de Bos received the Leiden Science Young Talent Award for his thesis on self-learning materials.
Juliane Klaura won the Unilever Research Prize for her master's thesis.
Simon Christian Hansmann received the Krijn Rietveld Graduate Societal Impact Award for his study on how different types of colorectal cancer cells affect the chance the cancer comes back.