This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of galaxies by testing theoretical models of galaxy formation against observations, particularly in the cases of extreme systems which have been found to have an excess of baryonic mass in their central regions, in the form of either supermassive black holes…

Lecture

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. van Dishoeck, Co-Promotor: G.J. Herczeg

Those pesky raindrops that get you wet on your way to work, are formed high up in the sky from clouds of water vapour. The process of nucleation describes the way this happens. Edgar Blokhuis of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry developed a theory to describe this transition more precisely. Chemists…

The ICEHL committee is currently exploring the options for online formats of ICEHL.

A team of European astronomers under Leiden leadership has discovered that dust particles around a star already coagulate before the star is fully grown. These agglomerated dust particles are the first step in the formation of planets. The research publish their discovery in the journal of Nature As…

An international team of astronomers, with researchers at Leiden Observatory playing a leading role, has mapped the fuel for galaxy formation in the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The results of the research have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The project examines the political conflict in the Red River Valley of Louisiana between the majority-black Republican Party and the overwhelmingly white Democratic Party by studying the composition and actions of each party.

Promotores: Prof.dr. E.F. van Dishoeck, Prof.dr. C.P. Dullemond

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Prof.dr. C. Dominik (UvA)

The work presented in this thesis is based on ALMA surveys of protoplanetary disks in three star-forming regions: Lupus, OMC-2, and NGC 2024.

Circumstellar discs are the reservoirs of gas and dust that surround young stars and have the potential to become planetary systems.

Many hot, rocky planets outside of our own solar system started out as large, gaseous Neptunes. This is what astronomers at Leiden University contend in a recent online publication.

‘It was a discovery we did not expect,’ says Remko Offringa, professor of Plant developmental genetics. Today he publishes a new trait of a versatile gene in Current Biology: it makes the difference in plants between herbaceous and woody stem growth. A useful feature to prevent dehydration.

Leiden researchers, Professor Remko Offringa and co-applicants Salma Balazadeh and Frederic Lens received an NWO-XL grant (2.5 million euros). Together with researchers in Wageningen and Groningen, they will study the genetic and environmental drivers of woodiness. From plant to molecule, the groups…

In every parliamentary system, people vote on political parties during an election instead of a president. It is very unlikely that one party gets the majority of the parliament. Therefore, a government is formed by negotiations between parties. In Belgium, this process is far more complicated than…

The ALMA Local Expertise Group (Allegro) is located in the Leiden Observatory (Sterrewacht). Professor Ewine van Dishoeck: ‘The Netherlands has played an important role in establishing ALMA. Thanks to this subsidy, we can now reap the scientific benefits.'

In this thesis chemical and physical processes in the ice mantles on interstellar dust grains are studied.

My work focuses on a class of astronomical objects called protoplanetary disks.

Stars like the sun are born in large molecular clouds existing from gas and dust. During the formation process, the chemical composition of the material can be altered drastically by the changing physical conditions.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Schaye & Prof.dr. C. Steidel (California Institute of Technology)

This thesis examines the link between simple molecules and the underlying structure and chemistry within protoplanetary disks - the birthplaces of planets.

Low-mass main-sequence stars like our Sun are continuous sources of outflowing hot magnetised plasma. In the case of the Sun, this is known as the solar wind, whereas for other stars they are called stellar winds.

Promotor: Arjen Doelman, Co-promotor: Vivi Rottschäfer

To study how planetary systems come into existence we study much younger systems still in formation.

The formation and evolution of galaxies is fundamentally driven by the formation of new stars out of cold gas.

Promotor: M. Franx, Co-Promotor: I.F. Labbé

How do galaxies form? That is what astronomer Mariska Kriek will be researching in the coming years. She received an NWO Vici grant of 1.5 million euros to study galaxies in the early universe. ‘This research uses new and unprecedented observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These allow…

How do you progress from an immense gas cloud somewhere in the universe to a star with planets? Research by Astronomy PhD student Martijn van Gelder sheds more light on the earliest phases of this process. He will receive his doctorate on November 24th.

How can cell wall engineering approaches be used to improve streptomycetes for industry to make new antibiotics?

Promotores: Prof.dr. M. Franx, Prof.dr. M. Kriek (Univ. of California at Berkeley)

How did dynastic organization – that it, the employment of non-ruling family members and the development of dynastic traditions and concepts – influence state formation in both Catholic Europe and Muslim West-Asia?

We investigate the buildup of galaxies from various vantage points. The first two chapters focus on the stellar content of galaxies, especially the distribution of stellar masses at birth and potential variations therein in various galactic environments.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Northern-Netherlandish artists drew outdoors to train their hands and eyes, and to record landscapes and nature. In her inaugural lecture on 21 March 2022, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Professor by Special Appointment of Art on Paper and Parchment, draws our attention to a…

On Friday, June 12th, the Europa Institute held its annual PhD Day.

On 21 and 22 March 2019 the workshop 'Criptic Identities. Historicizing the identity formation of persons with disabilities across the globe' takes place at the Leiden Institute for History.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Franx, Co-Promotor: Rychard Bouwens

This thesis takes steps toward understanding the interaction between gas-phase and solid-state molecules in star- and planet-forming regions.

Which immune mechanisms are involved in host defense against Staphylococcal infection?

Utilization of plant-originated products as new antibiotics

Scientists at Leiden University (Netherlands), Stuttgart University (Germany) and Ural Federal University (Russia) have successfully put forward a novel, computed, reaction mechanism that was experimentally tested and show that formaldehyde is formed at much earlier stages in the birthplaces of stars…

Mathematical biologists from Leiden have developed a model that helps to explain how the spine and vertebrae, among other things, form during embryonic development. The same process, the other way around, plays a key role in cancer metastasis. Publication in iScience.

Galaxies in the local Universe fall into two main categories of spirals and ellipticals. In this Thesis, we explore the structural evolution of galaxies into this bimodal distribution.