Science, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR)

Formation and design of institutions, and their impact on attitudes, behaviour, and values of political actors.

The high prevalence of pure red cell aplasia in Thailand has been associated with the sharp increase in number of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) copy products, based on a classical generic regulatory pathway, which have entered the market.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F.A. Deprettere, Co-promoter: Todor P. Stefanov

The idea of citizens and public professionals collaborating to provide public services has widely spread in several countries around the globe. Co-production is often presented as the go-to solution for challenges like a legitimacy crisis of both the government and the market, and financial concerns.…

Promotor: Prof.dr. R.M.H. Merks

Promotor: G.A. Persoon, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

New and reemerging infectious diseases call for innovative and efficient control strategies of which fast vaccine design and development represent an important element.

The aim of this project was to estimate emissions from lead products-in-use for the past, the present and the future and assess the development of toxicological risks associated with these products.

Turkic nomadic rulers established large empires in the Middle East and Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. This project will explore the link between their political ideology and the production of art and literature, via the cultural heritage of five cities along the Silk Road: Kashgar, Samarkand,…

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

Climate change is a challenge for both current and future generations. New biological resources have to be developed in order to meet the demand for energy as well as the demand for food.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is spreaded through the air. It is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it led 1.7 million people to death in 2016. This mortarlity rate is concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, and South Africa. These numbers make…

Glycoside hydrolases (glycosidases/GHs) are widely abundant enzymes in all kingdoms of life and are important biocatalysts that catalyze the hydrolysis of glycosidic linkages in oligo/polysaccharides, glycoproteins and glycolipids with tremendous efficiency

Can we develop new enzymes and cell factories to upgrade current enzyme cocktails towards complete degradation of biomass?

Anja Groten investigates matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D)*.

Immune system defends our body against pathogens and cancerous cells, but excessive immunity can in turn lead to tissue damages and diseases. For example, scratching the surface of the eye ignites an immune response that aims at preventing infection but can also lead to edema, angiogenesis and eventually…

This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D).

This project is situated within the context of an innovation of the biology curriculum in Dutch secondary schools. The main purposes are (1) to clarify the relation between teachers’ practical knowledge and the decisions they make when planning and implementing their lessons and (2) to develop a professional…

On December 11th, Andreea Geambasu succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Andreea on this great result.

This thesis examines the impacts and challenges of water use of electric power system. This thesis found that there are large differences in water use of electricity technologies, with hydropower and thermal power being two large water users.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

PNAS publication on protein encounter complexes

The aim of this study was to provide insight into how teachers in higher education can be supported in the design, implementation and evaluation of group assignments by developing a theoretical and evidence-based framework for the design of group assignments.

In order to analyze the challenges linked to data use in the context of nexus governance, Giest & Mukherjee use a policy design lens and more specifically the perspective of organizational policy instruments to look at the Mediterranean region.

Humanities, Academy of Creative and Performing Arts

The new book by Dimiter Toshkov - associate professor of Public Administration at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs - has been recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Glycosidases are essential in fundamental biological processes and are responsible for the degradation of most (oligo)saccharides, glycolipids and glycoproteins.

The main subject of this thesis is the design and synthesis of paramagnetic molecules for protein studies with NMR and EPR spectroscopy.

When do fire making tools appear in prehistory, and how might the use of these tools manifest in the archaeological record?

On October 31st, Margarita Gulian succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Margarita on this great result.

How can we, together international experts, define future needs of R+D contributions for innovations in the field of risk-based management of chemicals and products in a global perspective using alternative testing strategies to minimize animal tests?

In cooperation with Cyber Security Academie (CSA) and The Hague University of Applied Sciences the new Master Cyber Security Engineering is established and starts in September 2018.

A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a biologically inspired algorithm, highly capable at processing images and videos.

Promotor: W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: H.A. Every

Water droplets float in a hot pan because of the so-called Leidenfrost effect. Now physicists have discovered a variation: the Elastic Leidenfrost effect. It explains why hydrogel balls jump around on a hot plate making high pitched sounds. Publication in Nature Physics on July 24.

Spatial analysis on the basis of material culture has always been one of the major topics in archaeological research. Designating Place analyses the urban space of Roman Ostia and Pompeii in different ways, namely via geophysical analysis, spatial analysis, iconographic analysis and epigraphic analy…

Promotores: Prof.dr. G. Miley & Prof.dr. J.M. van den Broek

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting millions of people world-wide.

What are the behaviours of plant traits throughout various points in the growing season in a radiative transfer model framework and how well can this knowledge be integrated through data assimilation to provide priors for robust local and global vegetation products and analysis?

As a contribution to the changing legislation and evolving societal attitudes concerning environmental issues, this project aims to enhance and manipulate the plants’ own natural defense mechanisms against western flower thrips (WFT).

Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs at Leiden University, brought sience to practice by designing an “ideal” academic education programme on public affairs, to be embedded and taught at the graduate level.

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

Modern optimization algorithms offer solutions for architectural decisions like spatial, structural and energy efficiency. A young computer scientist from Leiden University co-authored a paper that won the Best Paper Award at a leading conference in Krakow during the summer.

How do we approach education that facilitates creative confidence for students that leads to innovative solutions to society’s present day and future sustainability challenges? This education research project tackles a sustainability dilemma faced by households in everyday life viz.

Over several decades, a variety of computational methods for drug discovery have been proposed and applied in practice. With the accumulation of data and the development of machine learning methods, computational drug design methods have gradually shifted to a new paradigm, i.e. deep learning methods…