The lack of success of new CNS drugs in clinical development is in part due to the complexity of the CNS, unexpected side effects, difficulties for drugs to penetrate the brain, but also by the lack of biomarkers.

Can a newly developed, app-based, personalized maintenance program enhance the effectiveness of the exposure-based one-session-treatment for children with a specific phobia?

There is a link in adolescents between brain connections and impulsiveness. Leiden researchers have discovered that these connections also predict which adolescents will make more impulsive choices two years further on.

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.J. Knibbe, Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Prof.dr. K. Allegaert (Leuven)

Gibbs processes, g-measures, fuzzy Gibbs states

Cláudio de Sá predicted the preferences of people using rankings. He adjusted ‘classical’ machine learning approaches, making them suitable for predicting preferences. His work can be applied in the prediction of election results. PhD defence on 16 December.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-promotor: E.C.M. de Lange

Assistant Professor Vedran Dunjko and his team received a gift from Google to support their quantum research. The research focuses on whether quantum computers can provide new ways of understanding the mysteries of high-energy physics.

Heavy rainfall can cause streets to flood and basements and tunnels to overflow. Jan van Rijn investigated, together with Christiaan Lamers (formerly of Leiden University) and Ton Beenen (STOWA, RIONED), how data science can help to predict which areas are at greater risk of flooding. Van Rijn presented…

In collaboration with the De Waag Technology & Society, Simone van der Hof of the Centre for Law and Digital Technology (eLaw department) will develop a code for digital children's rights based on the example of the age appropriate design code in Great Britain.

The main objective of this thesis was to develop clinically relevant survival models for patients with high-grade soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities, in particular the development and validation of prediction models for use in clinical practice.

It is a stormy Sunday afternoon, with gusts of a whopping 110 kilometres per hour. Chemist Teun Sweere defies the enormous headwind on his city bike and wins the NK Headwind cycling after 22,5 minutes. A new highlight follows six months later: his PhD defence (14 June).

On Friday 31 March, all students of Leiden University can take part into an international coding contest in Wijnhaven, the brand new building on the The Hague campus. The best player receives a drone, presented to him or her by the Dutch ICT politician of the Year. Register for free.

An indian stepwell on a nanoscale. That is what postdoc Nakkiran Arulmozhi calls the pattern he saw when he corroded a special kind of platinum crystal. The unique images show the destructiveness of the process, but also show how predictable it is.

As of 1 March 2018, Elizabeth (Liesbeth) de Lange has been appointed as Professor of Predictive pharmacology at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). She is head of the research group Predictive Pharmacology and mainly aims at developing mathematical models that can predict the effect…

In this thesis population pharmacokinetic and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approaches were applied to investigate the influence of glomerular filtration (GF) and active tubular secretion (ATS) on renal clearance in children.

With the use of big data, Leiden University is aiming to develop a system that sends automatic alerts when certain Industrial parts are starting to wear out. Researchers of the the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are developing a predictive maintenance platform together with, among…

Predicting cancer survival with machine learning, that is the aim of a new collaboration between the Mathematical Institute, the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) in Brussels and Leiden University Medical Center. The focus of this project is to characterise the model…

Does a drug enter into the human brain once administered in the body?

Two teams of Leiden Mathematics and Computer Science students have won the golden and bronze medals at an international programming contest with 605 participants. Member of Parliament and ICT politician of the Year Kees Verhoeven congratulated them personally.

The Executive Board has adopted a new Code of Conduct on Integrity for staff. This new code encompasses all the existing regulations within Leiden University, including in the field of research, behaviour towards students and purchasing. 'This Code of Conduct is a very clear statement,' commented Rector…

Imagine getting a notification on your mobile phone with your personal code for impending mental health problems or even depression: yellow, orange, or red. Science fiction? Not for scientist Eiko Fried. 'There is a real chance we can prevent some mental health problems before they occur.' Join the…

In a global effort, quantum computers are rapidly being developed. In the meantime, researchers have to learn how to write code for these devices, which are fundamentally different from conventional computers. A collaboration of scientists led by Google, and including physicists from Leiden and Delft,…

For his significant original contributions in the field of carbohydrate research, chemist Jeroen Codee will be awarded the biennial Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry.

De Code voor Kinderrechten op het internet toont makers van apps en games hoe zij de rechten van kinderen kunnen beschermen en meenemen in hun ontwerp. Dat is hard nodig, zeggen de opstellers hoogleraar Recht en Digitale Technologie Simone van der Hof en onderzoeksdirecteur Sander van der Waal van stichting…

The DASPO-group for data analysis and survival in personalized sarcoma at the Mathematical Institute has developed an app that provides personalised predictions for patients suffering from soft tissue sarcomas. Due to the aggressive nature of such tumors, the prognosis for such patients is poor, even…

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Prof.dr. P.H.A. Quax

A new study in Nature Plants has explored the most important organising principles that control vegetation behaviour. The insights from this study can be used to improve predictions on climate change. Leiden scientists Peter van Bodegom and Nadia Soudzilovskaia participated in the study.

Your brain responds in a predictable way when it encounters new or difficult tasks. This unique book teaches you concrete techniques rooted in cognitive science that will improve the way you learn and think about code.

To what extent does human intervention influence the world’s biodiversity? And can we predict how biodiversity and ecosystems will change in the coming years? Inaugural lecture by Peter van Bodegom, Professor of Conservation Biology, on 8 May.

On 22 September, the Social Justice Expertise Center and the Dutch Association on Labor Rights (VVA) brought together eighty (Dutch) labor law lawyers to discuss the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and fundamental labor rights.

If you’ve written a scientific manuscript, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the app-switching two-step that happens when you copy your data from one program and paste them into another. That time-tested workflow does the job, but it isn’t always the most efficient process. In an article on…

Do medicines arrive in the right amount at the right spot in our brain? By making a model that depicts our brain in small 'brain blocks', Esmée Vendel tries to find an answer to this question. Her new, mathematical model predicts the concentration of medicines in the brain over time and space. Vendel…

Synchronised heart rates and skin conductance tell us that people are attracted to each other. This explains why we feel a romantic ‘click’ with some people and not with others. This is the result of research by psychologist Eliska Prochazkova from the Leiden Institute for Brain and Recognition, which…

Stars orbit black holes while jumping up and down. This is the prediction of a theoretical model developed by Leiden physicist Satish Kumar Saravanan, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. He defends his PhD thesis on July 7th.

Scientists in Leiden are looking for signals in blood samples to predict whether patients will develop serious COVID-19 symptoms or not. Based on that knowledge, they will be able to propose targeted therapies to prevent serious symptoms. They hope to come up with the first results within the week.

The standard approach to build a quantum computer with Majoranas as building blocks is to convert them into qubits. However, a promising application of quantum computing—quantum chemistry—would require these qubits to be converted again into so-called fermions. Physicists from Leiden and Delft suggest…

Der Spiegel reports about the planned reform of the EU Code of Conduct aimed at tackling harmful tax practices of EU Member States. A reform is urgently needed to tackle remaining forms of tax competition, which cost EU countries billons of euros every year.

Although sugars are widely used in biological and medical research, their synthesis is still badly understood. Jeroen Codée has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for systematically studying the production of sugars. ‘I want to genuinely understand the reactions.’

On Friday 12 March 2021, the (Dutch) website www.codevoorkinderrechten.nl was launched. This code for children’s rights has been created to help those involved in the development and design of digital services to develop these services with the interests of children in mind.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. M.R.V. Chaudron, Co-Promotor: P. van der Putten

A new app provides dynamic predictions of survival for patients suffering from soft tissue sarcoma. It was developed by the mathematical Institute research group DASPO, Data Analysis and Survival for Personalised Oncology.

Worldwide, countries are barely prepared for major borderless crises such as extreme natural disasters or other unexpected calamities that destabilise society, Professor of Political Science, Arjen Boin, warns. In his inaugural address on 23 October he makes some recommendations.

Hermen Overkleeft and his colleagues Gideon Davies (University of York) and Carme Rovira (University of Barcelona) will receive a 9.1 million euros Synergy Grant from the European Research Council. Together, they will form the Carbocentre Synergy team for research into enzymes that work on glycans:…

If you know a crime is about to occur, should you be able to prevent it before it has even happened? This was one of the questions that was posed in light of predictive policing as a form of mass surveillance during the debate in the elective Governance of Crime and Social Disorder class of the Crisis…

Promotores: J.C. van Houwelingen, S.A. van de Geer

How is it that some covid-19 patients are affected much worse than others? Can we predict beforehand which of them will develop critical symptoms Professor Thomas Hankemeier, together with a diverse consortium of universities, academic hospitals and industrial partners, is looking for the answers to…

Physicists propose the existence of sterile neutrinos that would explain three big mysteries in nature. To actually find them in particle accelerators, researchers need to know how they are produced and how they decay. PhD candidate Kyrylo Bondarenko has made predictions about this, which are currently…

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.