Three major research projects involving Leiden scientists have been awarded a grant from NWO’s Gravitation Programme. The projects are on innovation processes, organs-on-chips and quantum software.

Students of the Science Faculty of Leiden University have chosen Frank Takes, researcher and teacher at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, to be the Teacher of the Year. Impressively enough, Takes also became the runner up Discoverer of the Year.

Tjerk Oosterkamp's group is conducting what is perhaps the coldest research in the world. The researchers have cooled a sensor to below 2 millikelvin - almost as cold as absolute zero. This allows them to make extremely sensitive measurements. PhD candidate Jaimy Plugge helped build the setup: ‘We are…

Leiden prof. emeritus Grzegorz Rozenberg is honoured with the first life time award in formal languages, a research area of theoretical computer science. During a small ceremony at his house, he received a statue that was specially made for the occasion.

Vera van Noort has been appointed Professor in the field of Computational Biology within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology from the 1st of February 2017. Van Noort’s expertise is in bioinformatics and her research focuses on the computational analysis of large-scale biological data…

Six master students of the Computer Science programme will present their papers on future cities at the NetMob conference in Oxford. The six papers were part of the international Future Cities Challenge and made it to the top 10 of all entries.

The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

The government is investing 646 million euros and has set aside a further 3.5 billion to drive economic growth in the Netherlands. Much of the National Growth Fund will be used for scientific innovations. Leiden University is involved in three of the projects.

Promotor: K.E. Schalm, Co-promotor: S.S. Lee

Winning an award at the start of your studies? No problem! Lieke Vertegaal is 20 years old and a first-year Computer Science student at Leiden University. On November 29, 2021, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KHMW) awarded her a Young Talent incentive award.

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these networks. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of Se…

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

On September 7, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science participated with a team of six students in the first edition of the Capture the Flag event 'Challenge the Cyber'. They were placed second in this national hacking competition for students.

NWO has awarded a €392k Projectruimte grant to physicists Koenraad Schalm and Jan Zaanen to study ‘strange metals’. These materials are alleged to follow the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics even at everyday length scales.

Simulating human language understanding on the computer is a great challenge. A way to approach it is to represent natural language meanings in logic, and to use logical provers to determine what does and does not follow from a text. What logic is best to use and how natural language meanings are best…

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

The STW project Energy Efficient Computer-Brain Interaction (principal investigator for LIACS: dr. T.P. Stefanov) has been granted. Funding for LIACS: 1 PhD student + travel/equipment budget, project duration: 4 years.

Affective Computing (AC and sometimes called ‘Emotional AI’) provides opportunities to automatically process emotional data. However, is EU data protection law fit for purpose when it is applied to such AC approaches?

The van Exter group has an extensive history of prior research in classical and quantum optics. As former part of the group of Han Woerdman, we have studied topics as diverse as:

Archaeologist Fulco Scherjon has used computer simulations to identify where and how Neanderthals lived in West Europe. What stood out was that they probably had lots of children and lived in smaller groups than was previously thought. PhD defence on 28 May.

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

From 16 to 26 July, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

From July 22nd to August 1st, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

On Tuesday September 11th, the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) organizes the third edition of its annual Science Day. Scientists from disciplines all across the physics spectrum will elaborate on their research during seventeen interactive talks. LION organizes the event to showcase the full range…

Can we make quantum devices from quantum surprises? And can we explore and build life from the nanoscale up?

In healthcare, gender and sex considerations are crucial because they affect individuals' health and disease differences. Yet, most algorithms deployed in the healthcare context lack close consideration of these aspects and do not account for bias detection. In their latest paper, Eduard Fosch-Villaronga,…

In 2018, the number of mobile phone users will reach about 4.9 billion. Assuming an average of 5 photos taken per day using the built-in cameras would result in about 9 trillion photos annually.

Electrons in a crystal lattice have properties that may differ from those of a free electron in vacuum.

Former PhD, Bachelor and Master students of the Van Exter Lab

Conference

PhD defence

Inaugural lecture

Promotor: R. Cramer

On a structural level, the properties featured by a majority of mechanical metamaterials can be ascribed to the finite number of soft internal degrees-of freedom allowing for low-energy deformations.

Materials with strongly correlated electrons show some of the most mysterious and exotic phases of quantum matter, such as unconventional superconductivity, quantum criticality and strange metal phase.

In this thesis we study quantum transport phenomena on the nanometer scale, in two classes of materials: topological insulators with induced superconductivity and graphene superlattices.

String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported this week in 'Science'.

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

PhD defence

The Joan Van der Waals colloquium is an ongoing bi-weekly lecture series.

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

For the first time, a computer can compete with the very best human players in StarCraft II, a video game played by tens of thousands at a professional level and by millions just for fun. Mike Preuss, university lecturer at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) responds to the achievement…

Jan Zaanen, Professor in Theoretical Physics of condensed material, has been awarded a Spinoza prize. His pioneering ideas about the collective behaviour of quantum particles and high temperature superconductivity have often given him the reputation of being something of a rebel.

The transition to new and renewable energy sources should be completed by 2050. Researchers in various disciplines at Leiden University are conducting unique research that will help us make this transition and reduce CO2 emissions.

Computer Science on place 51 in QS World Universities Ranking 2011

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Zaanen & Prof.dr. K.E. Schalm

Computer Science Leiden ranked second of the Netherlands in Shanghai Ranking

Can a computer give just as good a judgment as a judge? Professor emeritus Law and IT believes it can and talks about using computers in the courtroom in a podcast of the Universiteit van Vlaanderen.

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.