Lecture

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.

Conference

Conference

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2021, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

On an apparently normal cube a pattern of hollows and bulges appears when the cube is compressed. A method has been developed to design such three-dimensional structures and to construct these using simple building blocks. Publication in Nature.

Manufacturers produce high-end technology mostly top-down with large machinery, but small particles are able to build structures by themselves from the bottom up. A major challenge is that these particles easily clump together. Leiden physicist Daniela Kraft has developed a method to use this phenomenon…

This header image was once elected Image of the Week by De Volkskrant and won second place in the LION Image Award. The research behind it is no less successful if we’re counting prizes. Last August, group leader Tjerk Oosterkamp was awarded an NWO Projectruimte grant, and now NWO-TTW grants him an…

To improve our teaching and reward excellent teaching assistants, the institute offers a Teaching Assistant Prize to the best teaching assistant of the semester.

Lecture

Conference

Lecture, Research Seminar

On the evening of Tuesday January 31st, the physics institute organizes its triannual meeting for over seventy high school teachers. The program consists of lectures on developments in modern physics and the latest initiatives in the world of education.

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’.

Former PhD student Cameron Mackie will been awarded not one, but two dissertation prizes for his thesis on the aromatic universe. His work could provide us with a virtual sniff of space. ‘These molecules in space likely smell like a big charcoal grill!’

Lecture

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

Computers are capable of making incredibly accurate predictions on the basis of machine learning. In other words, these computers can learn without intervention once they have been pre-programmed by humans. At LIACS, we explore and push the borders of what a revolutionary new generation of algorithms…

In 2021 many of our students and staff won fantastic prizes and were awarded important research grants. This is our traditional review of these successes as the end of one year marks the beginning of another.

Lecture

Tonight 20:25, Julia Cramer, expert in quantum information and communication science, is a guest in the television science programma Atlas

Lecture

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (76) passed away on 14 March at his home in Cambridge, having been a long-term sufferer of the muscular disease ALS. A number of Leiden scientists look back at the life and scientific career of this world-famous physicist. 'He was very approachable and extremely…

Scientists have developed a material that breaks one of the fundamental principles governing many physical systems. Ordinary materials transmit external forces equally, no matter where the pressure comes from. The newly developed material breaks this rule and could potentially be of interest in soft-robotics…

Chemical reactions go hand-in-hand with an energy exchange with the environment in which they take place. Surfaces offer a variety of energy dissipation channels, constituted by the nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom of the atoms at the interface. Aiming at an improved future harvesting of energy,…

At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars (exoplanets). They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems. This way they address…

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your best experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.

The master’s specialisation Research in Theoretical Physics prepares you for a PhD position in theoretical physics. The research entails a broad range of topics including High Energy Physics and Particle Cosmology, Theoretical Physics of Life Processes and Condensed Matter Theory.

Promotor: H.J.M. de Groot

Digital technology is changing academia and society at lightning speed. LIACS is in the midst of this with groundbreaking research into data processing and artificial intelligence (AI). It conducts a unique combination of fundamental and applied research into major issues facing academia and society…

MRFM combines the principles of magnetic resonance and atomic force microscopy.

The long term goal of the Biophysical Organic Chemistry/SSNMR group, headed by Prof. Huub de Groot, is to reach an understanding of structure, dynamics and functional mechanisms of membrane proteins and self-organized biological assemblies and to translate this knowledge into new concepts for nano-devices,…

In the track War and Peace Studies, you will gain a thorough understanding of the history, theories as well as the contemporary and future policy challenges related to war, warfare, and the multidimensional promotion of peace.

More than 700 visitors got to know the Science Faculty during the Leiden Science Family Day. People of all ages could enjoy fascinating experiments, tours, interesting lectures, spectacular nitrogen shows and various workshops. It was an informative day with many (future) scientists, amazement and,…

The more complex the object, the harder it is to fold up. Space satellites often need many small motors to fold up an instrument, and people have difficulty simply folding up a roadmap. Physicists from Leiden and Amsterdam have now designed a structure that folds itself up in several steps. Publication…

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.

Lecture

Lecture

The Leiden Institute of Physics has been awarded three out of twelve available grants from the FOM Projectruimte. Principal Investigators Milan Allan, Stefan Semrau and Carlo Beenakker all receive around 400,000 euro for their research.

The European Research Commission (ERC) has awarded Advanced Grants to two Leiden researchers. Joke Meijer will be researching the effect of the biological clock on our health and Carlo Beenakker will be looking for Majorana fermions in superconductors.

Leiden alumnus and writer Tomas Lieske has published a novel which is set in the house of Paul Ehrenfest. Ehrenfest was a famous physicist who organized round table events every Wednesday evening at his home in Leiden in the early twentieth century. The big names from modern physics frequented these…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 goes to David Thouless, Michael Kosterlitz and Duncan Haldane for theoretical discoveries in the field of topological materials. Haldane spent part of 2008 in Leiden; he is the 14th Lorentz Professor to win a Nobel Prize.

Dwarf satellite galaxies in the Milky Way perform different dances than researchers initially expected. Marius Cautun from Durham University received a Marie Curie grant to unravel the mysteries of this orbital dance. October 1st 2018 he will start his research at the Leiden Observatory.

PhD Defence

The project has been done in the Quantum Optics group under the supervision of Dr. Jan Willem Dalhuisen. The title of the presentation is: ''Hopfions in curved spacetime.

The project has been done in the Theoretical Nanophysics group under the supervision of Prof.dr. Carlo Beenakker. The title of the presentation is: ''Quantum pumping signatures of parafermionic zero-modes.