Promotor: R. Tijdeman, Co-promotor: H.J.J. te Riele

The research in this thesis is focused on tomographic reconstruction based on two imaging modalities in electron microscopy.

With tomography it is possible to reconstruct the interior of an object without destroying.

Promotor: Prof.dr. K.J. Batenburg

Top scientists of three Dutch universities are working on software and systems for quantum computers. Researchers of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) and the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) are developing new algorithms to make those super computers work. The coming years,…

Promotores: H.W. Lenstra, K. Belabas (University of Bordeaux)

Artificial intelligence algorithms govern in subtle, yet fundamental ways, the way we live and are transforming our societies. The promise of efficient, low‐cost or ‘neutral’ solutions harnessing the potential of big data has led public bodies to adopt algorithmic systems in the provision of public…

Artificial intelligence could help make the work of public sector organisations, professionals, policy- and decision makers more effective, more efficient, and ideally could make it more rationalised and evidence-based.

The Algorithms and Software Technology (AST) research programme performs fundamental research in the areas of algorithm design and analysis.

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: W.A. Kosters

Promotor: J.N. Kok, P.E. Slagboom Co-promotor: J.F.J. Laros

Promotores: K.J. Batenburg, B. Koren

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg

Promotor: Robert Tijdeman, Co-promotor: Cornelis Kraaikamp

An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology

Promotor: S.J. Edixhoven, Co-promotor: R.S. de Jong

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.P. Abrahams, Prof.dr. M. van Heel

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: W.A. Kosters

Smart algorithms and powerful processors are just as essential for astronomy as big telescopes. Astronomers at Leiden University therefore constantly operate at the interface between astronomy and data science.

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

PhD Defence

Dorothea Schulz & Martin Hense

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

Due to the modern techniques of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening, data on the biological activity of many millions of compounds is known. However, it is still very difficult to transfer this data into knowledge: if we know that compounds A and B bind to a certain protein with high…

The chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism—a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, challenging prominent historians such…

An assessment of Libyan legislation

Imagine how much time, money and discomfort it would save: a personalised treatment for each individual patient. Precision medicine like this is coming ever closer, thanks in part to Elise Dusseldorp’s algorithms. They retrieve a wealth of information from research data.

Leiden University archaeologists are reconstructing houses from the Stone Age, using only resources available during that period. This method offers surprising insights into the ingenuity of our distant ancestors, and challenges existing archaeological views.

What if you could watch a CT scan live, instead of analysing the images afterwards? If it is up to the Leiden mathematician Jan-Willem Buurlage, that will soon be a reality. He is developing methods to make the algorithms behind 3D scans faster. Quite a challenge: ‘Just like mathematicians, computers…

How and to what extent can a historic house reconstruct a family or personal identity through image-building in China?

Multi-objective evolutionary computation aims to find high quality (Pareto optimal) solutions that represent the trade-off between multiple objectives.

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.

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-promotor: T. Grüne

Continuous optimization is never easy: the exact solution is always a luxury demand and the theory of it is not always analytical and elegant.

Making predictions about emotional problems or the effects of air pollution: Marjolein Fokkema’s algorithms are getting better at this all the time. She is making her algorithms increasingly flexible, so they can predict not just characteristics at one particular moment, but also how skills, for example,…

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Promotor: H.J.A. Röttgering, Co-promotor: M. Haverkorn

Anna Scott is a Canadian pianist-researcher interested in using the early twentieth century recordings of the Brahms circle of pianists to question persistent gaps between the loci of knowledge, ethics, and act in both modern mainstream and historically-informed performances of Brahms’s late piano w…

Source: Nature Biotechnology, Volume 2014, Issue June (2014)

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused…

If an algorithm has to learn to understand language, simply having a lot of data doesn’t help much. Like us, a computer has to learn the language in interaction with others. Tessa Verhoef is fascinated by how this interaction works.

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

Science, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

What kinds of vocal music were not typically transmitted in written musical notation? Can specific ‘lost’ song forms - siciliane, giustiniane, le Grechesche, gli stili “regionali“ nel canto del quattrocento - be more precisely identified than they have been until now, both in musicological research…

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?

How to reconstruct the middle parts (videlicet haute-contres, tailles and quintes) from French orchestral pieces, which survived only in their reduced forms (featuring primarely dessus and continuo), according to historical examples?

Big data promises to transform public decision-making for the better by making it more responsive to actual needs and policy effects. However, much recent work on big data in public decision-making assumes a rational view of decision-making, which has been much criticized in the public administration…