The use of N fertilizers has increased worldwide in the past century. While this increased input of N has increased food productivity, it has also contributed to decreases in biodiversity, soil quality and environmental health, including increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Nitrogen deposition does not only affect plant biodiversity, but also strongly affects the composition of the remainder of the food web, through the changes in plant composition. In an unprecedented analysis of population changes of butterfly and moth species, an international research team including…

Advanced sensing techniques require graphene with high quality and well-controlled surface chemistry.

Vinasse is a major by-product generated by the sugarcane biofuel industry. It is a source of microbes, nutrients and organic matter and often it is recycled as fertilizer.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.V.J. Linnartz, Co-Promotores: S. Ioppolo, H.M. Cuppen

Even a small quantum computer should be able to simulate exactly the properties and behaviour of new molecules. This would take chemistry to an entirely new level. Better solar panels, more powerful batteries, saving lots of energy in the chemical industry: the applications have the potential to transform…

The Cryogenics Department has a liquid helium production unit and an automatic liquid nitrogen filling plant.

Planets are formed in disks of gas and dust around young stars.

Materials balances have been used in the recent past for the analysis of substance oriented environmental problems and the formulation of measures for environmental policy. In this study an integrated tool, based on the materials balance principle, has been developed for the analysis of both environmental…

List of Support Departments at LION and the Faculty of Science

Can we enhance the capacity of host immune cells to kill mycobacteria via production of reactive nitrogen species?

PhD Defence

Following the Beirut explosion, BBC's podcast series The Foodchain explores the chemical that caused the blast: ammonium nitrate. A compound that is widely used to produce fertilizer. Professor of Environmental sustaibability Jan Willem Erisman tells about the effects of nitrogen on the environment.

Associate professor at the Natural Products Laboratory, Institute of Biology, Leiden University - the Netherlands

Marc Koper’s research focuses on electrocatalysis and electrochemical surface science for sustainable energy and chemistry. Reactions of interest are the redox reactions of the oxygen/hydrogen cycle (water oxidation, hydrogen evolution), the carbon cycle (reduction of carbon dioxide, oxidation of small…

Hot astrophysical plasma is ubiquitous in the Universe, from comets in our Solar system to the largest scale structures -- the cosmic web filaments. These hot plasmas, with the temperature of a few millions of degrees, are often observed in the X-ray wavelength range.

The research aim of the Catalysis and Surface Chemistry group headed by Prof. Marc Koper is to probe and understand chemical reactions on well-defined, mostly single crystalline, surfaces at the molecular level.

Catalysis is of extreme relevance in the production of everyday materials and plays a central role in many aspects of our life.

Promotors: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon, Prof.dr.ir. H.H. de Iongh

Lecture

How can we best deal with the current problems caused by the human impact on the nitrogen cycle? How do we make the transition to a sustainable society? As of 1 September, nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman will be working on these questions at Leiden University: he will exchange the Louis Bolk Institute…

Day-to-day activities are important in the development of social identities, the establishment of social standing, and the communal understanding of societal rules. This perspective is broadly referred to as practice theory and relates to the power of an overarching social structure and the individual…

Research at the Catalysis and Surface Chemistry group is comprised of the following research themes:

Nearly six hundred new first-year students visited their new faculty on 15 Augustus during the EL CID introduction week. They were welcomed at the Faculty of Science with a transmitter hunt, photo shoots, warm words and lots of liquid nitrogen.

With defending his thesis ‘Applications of topology to Weyl semimetals and quantum computing’, the Leiden theoretical physicist Tom O'Brien has gained the rare 'cum laude' qualification. The freshly minted PhD has started a five year research programme on quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, funded…

Seagoing vessels may emit fewer and fewer harmful substances, but how do you measure whether they comply with the standards? The Dutch Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) and the universities of Leiden and Wageningen are starting a joint study to detect the emission of sulfur and nitrogen dioxide…

Radiation can be used to determine the isotope ratio of a skeleton. This provides information about where our ancestors lived and what they consumed. Dr Andrea Waters has developed a revolutionary method that can trace patterns of consumption from tens of thousands of years ago.

What are the functions of autophagy in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger?

This project, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hans van der Plicht, comprises several studies aimed at the use of isotopes occurring naturally in organic material as tracers for both the climate change and its cultural impact at about 6200 BC. The research will be carried out by the co-applicant at…

Working on superconductivity, finding an exoplanet or learning how to program with Python. More than one hundred girls visited Leiden University on Thursday 13 February during the Girls in Science Day.

The first Leiden Science Family Day on Saturday 6 October was a great success. During the ‘Weekend of Science’ more than 700 visitors, including 350 children, visited the Faculty of Science. With a program full of experiments, lectures, guided tours and demonstrations, visitors were given a glimpse…

The research article ‘The life history of an enslaved African’ is one of the top 20 read Archaeometry articles in the period of January 2017 to December 2018.

Higher temperatures are resulting in changes to vegetation and soil in mountain areas throughout the world. An international research team including Leiden ecologist Ellen Cieraad published an article on 25 January in Nature on the disruption to the ecosystem.

The aim of the research project is to get insight in the biostratigraphical age and the palaeoecological setting of the Schöningen sites and hominin behavior and subsistence during the late Lower Palaeolithic.

Plants could be regarded as small chemical factories, which produce chemical substances via photosynthesis. If we can imitate photosynthesis in an artificial system, we can make clean fuels and materials out of sunlight and CO2. Huub de Groot is very close to designing a system of this kind.

The ‘Stans Prize 2017' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Davide De Mauro. Other CML prizes were awarded to Jeroen Guinee, Reinout Heijungs, Martina Vijver, Willie Peijnenburg en Kevin Groen

For the first time, international researchers have mapped the network of bacteria on coral reefs. They write about it in Nature Communications (9 April). Professor by special appointment Nicole de Voogd (Naturalis Biodiversity Center & Institute of Environmental Sciences) and two of her PhD students…

In otherwise energetic desserts at the bottom of the sea, researchers have found oases where microbes can harvest energy. Remarkably, the microbes first have to be buried under starving conditions for 80,000 years. An international group of researchers, amongst them José Mogollón from the Insitute of…

Circular agriculture and more nature are important to reduce harmful emissions and to give a new impetus to biodiversity. But is that compatible with the Netherlands' position as an important exporter of food products? Professor of Conservation Biology Geert de Snoo believes it is, at least provided…

Metal-containing molecules combine geometrical features and a reactivity that are inherently different from that of organic molecules. My research focuses on light-activatable metal-based anticancer drugs and metal-functionalized liposomes. Light is a very selective way to activate photosensitive drugs…

The dental remains of 25 enslaved Africans from the site of Newton's Plantation, on Barbados, were subjected to isotope analysis. Previous research had pointed out that the locally born individuals were subjected to high concentrations of lead poisoning. A new study, done by Dr Jason Laffoon among others…

On Friday October 26th 2012 the third annual Jan Reedijk LIC Symposium will be held. The main lectures of the day will be "Enzyme catalysis in relation to hydrogen and electron transfer" by invited speaker Prof. Nigel Scrutton (Manchester), and "Molecular enzymology of dinitrogen metabolism" by Prof.…

On Saturday 9 February 2019 we celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2019 in Leiden! View the photos of this festive day, with contributions from Robbert Dijkgraaf and Ewine van Dishoeck, and numerous fascinating workshops and exciting experiments.

The European Project SUNRISE, ‘Solar energy for a circular economy’, has been selected as one of the six Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) within the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission. Funded with 1 million euros, it will set the base for a large scale European research project.…

To date it has proved very difficult to convert the promises of the miracle material graphene into practical applications. Amedeo Bellunato, PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, has developed a method of cutting graphene into smaller fragments using a diamond knife. He can then construct…

Chemist Roxanne Kieltyka has received an ERC Starting Grant of 2 million euros. In her lab, she creates gels that mimic the instructive material that supports cells in our body. With the grant, she aims to make these gels stiff and tough, and to create a bio-printed miniature heart ventricle.

Giant prehistoric 'unicorns' once wandered over the prairies of Central Asia. New research has shown that these so-called Siberian unicorns lived much longer than was believed, and probably did not become extinct until 'just' 39,000 years ago. Publication in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

In 2015, Jorryt Matthee thought he discovered an extremely distant galaxy called CR7, which lacked elements heavier than helium. Three years later, he shows with measurements using the ALMA telescope that the galaxy does have carbon after all, and even in normal concentrations. The American Astronomical…