In the search for sustainable energy solutions, the idea of artificial photosynthesis has been proposed as an approach with which to use water and sunlight to produce hydrogen.

Is the current existing legal framework on compulsory and voluntary care - for vulnerable young adults (between the ages of 18 to 23) - in need of revision? And if so, what kind of amendments would be advisable?

Of all the mass in our Universe, 80% is thought to consist of a hypothetical and invisible substance called dark matter (DM).

Scientists of Leiden University and Technical University Delft are going to predict how and where defects in sewer systems arise. They are working with light sensitive camera’s, based on new automated multi-sensor inspection with stereo vision and laser range scanning. Their models are going to process…

An international team including Peter van Bodegom shows how trait variability can be incorporated in Essential Biodiversity Variables to allow monitoring how organisms respond to global change. They published their results in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Leiden chemical biologists led by Dr Mario van der Stelt have developed a method to facilitate the search for new drugs. This method has allowed them to take an important first step in the development of a drug against obesity.

Astronomers Professor Christoph Keller and Dr Frans Snik will be developing a commercial module for measuring fine particulates. They have been awarded an STW Demonstrator subsidy of 138,000 euros.

In the future top Dutch speed skaters may skate even faster thanks to a skate full of electronics. This ‘measuring skate’ gives top skaters and coaches information about the skater’s technique and motion. It can measure the dynamics at play between the foot, the ice and the skate.

As an R&D manager, how can you measure the R&D (research and development) performance of your firm? How does knowing the importance of different R&D measures allow R&D managers to formulate more effective strategies to improve their firm’s R&D performance?

Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander, Co-promotor: F.R. Nardi

Which plant leaf characteristics are involved in thrips resistance in tomato?

In their article; The Effects of Legal Measures to Empower Supervisory Directors: Evidence from a Financial Distress Perspective, Santen and De Bos discuss the relationship between the corporate governance structure of a company and its financial performance. Until now studies predominantly hypothesize…

What and how are we measuring in research of learner-learner interaction? Irena Galikyan (PhD candidate at ICLON) defends her dissertation on this subject on 14 April.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.J. Kroes

Health policy in the Netherlands is increasingly based on Positive Health. This approach sees health as much more than simply not being ill. There are more and more initiatives to promote Positive Health. But how do you know if these initiatives and policy are actually effective? LUMC researchers are…

Breeding for resistance becomes more and more important because we want to reduce the use of pesticides. A fast and cheap alternative can be to make use of morphological or chemical markers.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh, C.J.M. Musters

The number of cases of coronavirus in the Netherlands is on the rise. Some mayors are now calling for measures that are more far-reaching than those at present. For example, they want it to be possible to enforce measures behind the front door. Would that be allowed?

Each week, Dutch radio programme BNR Lobbypanel discusses a topic at the intersection of politics and entrepreneurship. From 2020 Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs, will participate each month in the BNR Lobbypanel discussions. This week Timmermans joined the discussion…

Scientists regularly appear in the media. They participate in science cafés, write a popular-science book or visit school classes. In that way, they want to convey their knowledge and enthusiasm to society. But do they succeed? To answer that question, a new website is launched, with a toolbox full…

Dr. Eduard Schmidt interviewed a hundred government managers from different ministries who had to perform cuts in own budget to various extents, under the Balkenende, Rutte I and II cabinets. Dr. Schmidt had one central research question: how do public managers in the Dutch government handle austerity…

This project incorporates spatiality into the discussion of medieval demography, allowing for a more nuanced view on medieval town populations. It establishes a maximum population count for towns for periods prior to 1400 and provides a means to compare the ranking of towns using size and density instead…

Academics are increasingly facing threats, harassment and hate speech following public appearances. The Dutch universities – united in the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) – is now adopting a number of national measures, from a zero-tolerance policty to psychosocial help for vic…

Adolescents who were more popular among their classmates in junior school are often the ones who are more inclined to share things fairly with others. During this sharing process, 'social' areas of the brain are more strongly activated than in adolescents who are less popular. This is the finding of…

Free playtime and physical play are of great importance to children's social development. That is the main conclusion of innovative research by developmental psychologists and computer scientists from Leiden University.

Researchers at Leiden University and TU Delft have combined two techniques that are used to measure the structure of biomolecules, creating a method that is ten times more sensitive.

Children are suffering disproportionally from the coronavirus measures. They feel depressed more often compared to other age groups. But what about the legal perspective? Are children’s rights being violated?

The distinguished academic journal Science published an article about an important and extensive series of measurements made by the Centre for Isotope Research (CIO) of the University of Groningen. The measurements concern the dating of a lake bed sediment in the Suigetsu Lake in Japan.

The extension of the Dutch government’s Covid-19 relief measures for businesses has ensured that in the last six months of 2020 the number of bankruptcies was at an all-time low. However, according to the Bijzonder Beheer Barometer (special risk management barometer) an initiative of PwC and the Department…

Promotor: K. Kuijken, Co-Promotor: H. Hoekstra

An international team of astronomers have become the first in the world to detect isotopes in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. It concerns different forms of carbon in the gaseous giant planet TYC 8998-760-1 b. The research will be published in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday.

On 29 January 2019, Robbert J. van Eijk will defend his Ph.D thesis, in which he investigates the online advertisements that seem to follow you.

Promotores: P. Stevenhagen, E. Fouvry (Univeriste Paris Saclay)

The formation and evolution of galaxies is fundamentally driven by the formation of new stars out of cold gas.

A full overview of THEOR PhD theses.

The dissociative chemisorption of methane on metal surfaces is of fundamental and practical interest, being a rate-limiting step in the steam reforming process. The reaction is best modeled with quantum dynamics calculations, but these are currently not guaranteed to produce accurate results because…

Brain development in children with an extra X chromosome as compared to children with autism: evidence from MRI

This thesis contains results on the arithmetic and geometry of del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1.In Chapter 1 we give the necessary background, assuming the reader is familiar with algebraic geometry.

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarised light from an exoplanet. From this light they can deduct that a disk of dust and gas orbits the exoplanet. In this disk moons are possibly…

If X is a locally compact Hausdorff space, then a representation of the complex C* algebra C_0(X) on a Hilbert space $H$ is given by a spectral measure that takes its values in the orthogonal projections on $H$.

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…

The origin and evolution of galaxies are closely tied to the cyclic feedback processes between stars and the interstellar medium (ISM).

Large areas of space are filled by molecular clouds that consist of gas and dust grains that are the remnants of dead stars. When these clouds start collapsing, the decreasing temperature and increasing density cause gas particles to start accreting onto dust grain surfaces.

The main goal of the THEOR CHEM group, headed by Prof. Geert-Jan Kroes, is to characterize, and to accurately predict the outcome of chemical reactions at gas-solid and liquid-solid interfaces. Here the solid surface is typically a metal or an ice surface. These goals are important to many areas in…

Promotores: Prof.dr. F.P. Israel, Prof.dr. P.P. van der Werf

The thesis mainly contributes to the characterization of Majorana fermions as they appear in the Condensed Matter context.

It was already known that social anxiety disorder often affects more than one person in the same family. But research by PhD student Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam has now shown that there are genetic brain characteristics that are associated with social anxiety. The PhD ceremony will take place on 14 Ja…

Prof.dr. P. Stevenhagen, Prof.dr. K. Belabas (Universite Bordeaux I)