Sustainable energy from wind and solar is most readily available near the sea.

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-Promotor: F. Calle-Vallejo

In this dissertation, the synthesis and characterization of a series of iron complexes based on different ligand platforms are described.

Human civilization consumes a huge amount of fossil fuels, which has resulted in an atmospheric CO2 level which has not been higher in over 800 millennia.

Before the large scale use of renewable energy sources can be implemented in our society, the storage of electrical energy needs to be tackled. Storage the energy as hydrogen via the reduction of protons is a good option.

In this dissertation iron-based homogeneous catalysts were synthesized, characterized and investigated for water oxidation activity.

Heterogeneous catalysis is essential to many industrial applications. These catalysts are often comprised of supported nanoparticles, which contain various different surface sites.

Promotor: H.J.M. de Groot, Co-Promotor: A. Alia

A catalyst: normally a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction, without adding molecules to this reaction. Scientists from the group of Prof. Marc Koper of Leiden University and Prof. Yang Shao-Horn of MIT now discovered that in specific reactions that need oxygen, catalysts called metal oxides…

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-promotors: A.I. Yanson, L.B.F. Juurlink

How did toxin genes evolve from harmless physiological genes?

Koper

The central theme of Rik Mom’s research group is to identify what the electrode-electrolyte interface looks like when electrocatalysis is taking place. Using specialized forms of Raman and X-ray spectroscopy, we study the chemical state and bonding environment of the electrode surface and near-surface…

Evolution & Biodiversity is one of the four research themes of the Institute of Biology Leiden.

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-Promotor: L.B.F. Juurlink

This thesis describes the use of a combined approach of computational and experimental techniques to gain novel insights to understand the glycosylation reaction and its reactive intermediates.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

The mechanism of the electrochemical reduction of dioxygen by a mononuclear pyridylalkylamine copper complex was investigated (see picture). It was shown that in neutral aqueous solution dioxygen undergoes stepwise reduction, wherein hydrogen peroxide plays a key role. The rate constants determined…

The Great Rift Valley in Africa is a real treasure trove for discovering early human fossils. The fossils found in this part of Africa have determined our view of human evolution. But was the Great Rift Valley really the place where evolution took place or just a place where fossils are well preserved…

Studies in Human Evolution is a series of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

How can we make the production of chlorine cheaper and more friendly for the environment?

Why do plants produces always produced so many slightly differing metabolites within a particular chemical class?

Microbial Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme focuses on understanding how bacteria sense and respond to their environment, and how bacterial diversity and evolution is influenced by cooperative and antagonistic interactions taking place between microbes.

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T.J. Aartsma, Co-promotor: R.N. Frese

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme is to understand what are the key drivers of plant biodiversity during evolution with a focus on plant life history and resilience traits and develop tools to restore and maintain plant biodiversity.

How has early development in R. ocellatus been modified as a result of its parasitic embryonic lifestyle?

The glycosylation reaction is a pivotal reaction in creating new and complex oligosaccharides.

The local ordering of atoms at the surface of a metallic particle determines its catalytic activity and selectivity. As energy systems of the future will be based on efficient catalytic conversion of small molecules in closed cycles, we study how structural effects of catalysts can be used to our ad…

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. E. Bouwman

The growing demand of energy indicates that global energy resources in the form of fossil fuels will not be sufficient in the future. In order to solve potential future energy problems development of a sustainable hydrogen economy is highly desirable.

Science, Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL)

Negotiation can only really be an alternative to warfare, if the parties agree on a framework of rules and procedures. And if the confidence of the partners may increase in another. But negotiations continue to wage war by peaceful means.

Promotor: A. Doelman, Co-promotor: J.D.M. Rademacher

Balsaminaceae is a diverse plant family characterized by a huge floral morphological diversity.

In order to compare languages, it is important to have a thorough knowledge of the specific languages you are studying. Gijsbert Rutten and his team are investigating the origin of Standard Dutch and the repression of ‘non-standard’ variants between 1750 and 1850.

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

The research presented in this thesis makes use of small molecules (as H2 , D2 and O2 ) on well-defined single crystal surfaces (flat Pt(111), flat Cu(211) and curved Pt(111)) to elucidate the role of surface structure and degrees of freedom in the reactant in specific surface reactions.

The soil-dwelling, filamentous bacteria of the genus Streptomyces are renowned for their production of useful secondary metabolites including antibiotics. The work described in this thesis provides new insights on the role and regulation of antibiotic production and resistance in these bacteria.

A difficulty of studies on chemical kinetics are the reaction time scales and detection of their intermediates.

Hetterscheid

Promotores: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Prof.dr. L.B.F.M. Waters (UvA), Prof.dr. C. Dominik (UvA)

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-promotor: O. van Gaans

How can we make make accurate predictions for reactions of molecules on metal surfaces?

This perspective addresses four challenges facing theorists whose aim is to make quantitatively accurate predictions for reactions of molecules on metal surfaces, and suggests ways of meeting these challenges, focusing on dissociative chemisorption reactions of H2, N2, and CH4.

Although it is often assumed that the stereochemistry in Ugi multicomponent reactions is determined in the final Mumm rearrangement step, experimental and computational evidence that Ugi reactions on hydroxylated pyrrolines proceed under kinetic control is reported.

Promotores: G.W. Canters, T.J. Aartsma

Promotores: Prof.dr. M. Franx & Prof.dr. P.G. van Dokkum (Yale University)