How do humans construct their self?

PhD Defence

Is the possibility of computers making decisions for us in the future realistic? Holger Hoos, professor of Machine Learning, gives his opinion about the future of artificial intelligence in the television show ‘The future is fantastic’ on NPO3.

Lecture

PhD Defence

The relative simplicity of the bacterial cell, short generation times and well defined and inexpensive culturing conditions have significantly contributed to our understanding of many complex biological systems. Yet the workings of the bacterial genome, seemingly impossibly compressed within a tiny…

In human cells, a meter-long DNA is condensed inside a micrometer-sized cell nucleus. Simultaneously, the genetic code must remain accessible for its replication and transcription to functional proteins.

Chromatin is an ubiquitous protein-DNA complex that forms the structural basis of DNA condensation in all eukaryotic organisms.

We always have several ongoing studies running in our labs. Below you can find information about each one.

The group Theoretical Physics of Life Processes, led by Helmut Schiessel, focuses on the physics of chromatin, the DNA-protein complex that fills the nuclei of eukaryotic cells.

Lecture, China Seminar

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

This thesis explores the theoretical and observational properties of distant massive galaxies that harbour active black holes in their centres and shine brightly at radio wavelengths.

On May 31st, Bobby Ruijgrok succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bobby on this great result.

Promotores: A.H. Meijer, H.P. Spaink

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

Basketry, cordage and textiles made of plant fibers or bark are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. By means of experimental archaeology and microwear analysis, we obtain indirect evidence about this important craft.

How do you fit two meters of DNA in a tiny compartment and at the same time are able to access the right parts of it at the right times?

This study looks at population response to government containment strategies during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in four high-trust Northern European countries–Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden–with special emphasis on expressions of governmental trust.

Freshwater is an important resource, but at a great risk of species decline due to habitat loss, pollution and over-exploitation, and invasive alien species.

Honorata Mazepus and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz are assistant professors at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. Mazepus and Kantorowicz are one of the authors of this article in Nature on the role of national identity on public health support during global pandemics.

To construct catalysts that can produce fuels from CO2 innumerable times, we need to learn much more about how catalysis works. Irene Groot is conducting groundbreaking research into catalysis at the atomic level.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

We are developing the conceptual framework, which is new to this taxonomic group, and evaluate the current state of the art with respect to all critical parameters and transfer functions for a fully developed Population Consequences of Acoustic Disturbance (PCAD) model.

Case-studies on use-wear analysis of prehistoric flint tools

... which conceptualizes and investigates cognitive and affective processes with respect to their ultimate function: the control of voluntary action and self-regulation.

Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

Music can affect how we feel, think, and behave. But how do we learn about the specifics of people's responses to music so that we can apply this to health and well-being? By looking at characteristics of the music, as well as the differences between listeners, we hope to better understand as well as…

Can epigenetic changes explain associations between early life stress and health outcomes?

Develop a tool to assess land tenure, access to land and, and land tenure conflict in Timor-Leste

In science, it is of vital importance that multiple studies corroborate the same result. Researchers therefore need to know all the details of previous experiments in order to implement the procedures as exactly as possible. However, this is becoming a major problem in neuroscience, as animal studies…

Scientists at the LUMC are working hard on potential virus inhibitors, antiviral screening and a treatment for COVID-19. But finding funding for the research project wastes precious time. SteunLeiden.nl has therefore started a crowdfunding for Professor of Virology Eric Snijder and his team. Donate…

OSCL is a learning community where anyone associated with Leiden University can learn and talk about open science practices. Example events are Open Science cafés, workshops, and walk-in-hours. The what Open science is an umbrella term for an approach to science that aims to make scientific…

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

A full overview of MacBio PhD Theses.

It has been argued that the Internet presents numerous new opportunities for crime, including homicide. So far, empirical scholarly research in this domain is rather limited. In order to discover how perpetrators have used the Internet in the homicides they have committed, we conducted an international…

This project explored the role of material culture, in casu painted plaster and its technologies, in expressing dynamic social identities and in forging complex interwoven human relationships in the context of the Middle to Late Bronze Age of the Aegean and East Mediterranean.

The group of Dr. Roxanne Kieltyka designs and synthesizes molecules that self-assemble into polymeric materials using specific non-covalent interactions. These substrates can be used for numerous applications in medicine ranging from disease detection to cell delivery depending on the (bio)molecular…

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.

IT lawyer Eduard Fosch Villaronga wants to promote diversity and inclusiveness in AI research. And that's really important, because he has observed how artificial intelligence - from Twitter to walking robots - is prejudice in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with the University of Hyderabad.

The CMCB comprises research groups from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

Lecture

Within in the NWO project "(Re)counting the Uncounted. Replication and Contextualization of Dutch and Belgian Premodern Population Estimates (1350-1800)" two vacancies for a student-assistant have opened up.

Previous OSCL events and member initiatives include: