In this dissertation (titled: Exploring the Synergies between Transfer in Reinforcement Learning and Procedural Content Generation) we explore how the two research fields named in the title, namely Transfer in Reinforcement Learning (TRL) and Procedural Content Generation (PCG) can synergize togethe…

Optimally solving real-world expensive Black-Box Optimization (BBO) problems w.r.t. real-world constraints, such as wall-clock time and computational costs, is extremely difficult and tedious.

Research

Kunst en vrije tijd, Kunst en vrije tijd

Atoms and molecules are the basic units of matter. If we keep dividing a bar of gold or a glass of water into smaller parts, at the end we are left with a single gold atom or a water molecule.

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent causes of death in the world. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is the development of atherosclerosis in the medium and large-sized arteries.

Cardiovascular disease is a major global burden and atherosclerosis is the main underlying pathological process.

With the dramatic growth of the image data on the web, there is an increasing demand of the algorithms capable of understanding the visual information automatically.

Fungal infections pose a significant threat to individuals with compromised immune systems and despite advancements in diagnosis and treatment, they continue to jeopardize patient’s health.

Promotor: T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: B.E. Snaar-Jagalska

To study how planetary systems come into existence we study much younger systems still in formation.

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

Striga hermonthica, commonly known as witchweed, infests major cereal crops in Sub-Saharan Africa causing severe yield losses and threatening the livelihood of millions of resource poor farmers.

This dissertation explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) can effectively and responsibly contribute to complex decision-making processes. By combining AI and human intelligence, Hybrid Intelligence (HI) emerges, allowing the strengths of both humans and machines to be utilized.

Heterogeneous catalysis is essential to many industrial applications. These catalysts are often comprised of supported nanoparticles, which contain various different surface sites.

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

This ecological community has long been known to affect host biology, and their diverse roles have been further clarified in recent years following numerous studies of animal:microbiota interactions in diverse systems.

In this thesis, we aimed to better understand the underlying mechanisms involved in TNBC progression and metastasis formation and discover new targets to reduce breast cancer related deaths.

In this thesis, bioorthogonal chemistry is combined with correlative light-electron microscopy to selectively label and study pathogenic intracellular bacteria within the host immune cell.

Organic amendments applied to agricultural fields can partially offset our carbon emissions to the atmosphere and improve the resilience of agriculture to the effects of climate change. Driving these benefits, however, are complex and poorly understood interactions between organic amendment properties,…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

In light of climate change, it is crucial to determine whether plant species can adapt to future climates to avoid extinction. Plants adapt to various conditions by altering their functional traits, such as leaf size or photosynthetic rate. Some traits appear linked and vary together between species,…

The CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2), a member of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily, is widely involved in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. However, no drugs for this receptor have made it to the pharmaceutical market yet.

In the current global context, there is a pressing need to address sustainable energy supplies to safeguard our Planet and its ecosystems. The choices made by human society have a significant impact on genetic evolution and climate.

Membrane fusion is a vital process in living organisms and is mediated by zipper-like proteins.

The deeper understanding of an organism's pathology is important for developing treatments. Over centuries of systematic research, clinical researchers have demonstrated that the more information they acquire about the cellular properties and their organisation in the tissue, the better they can understand…

Promotor: Prof.dr. V. Icke, Co-Promotor: T.I. Madura

The role of material production as a driver of environmental impacts is increasing, which calls for a better understanding of global material flows. This thesis explores the role of in-use stocks of products, buildings and infrastructure as a key driver of global material demand and discusses the implications…

The function of TLRs in innate immunity has aroused worldwide attention soon after its discovery. Because of the broad functions of TLR2 in innate immunity, the drive for the development of TLR2-targeted vaccines or therapeutic treatments has accelerated in the last decades.

Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G.L Klinkhamer, Co-promotor: K. Vrieling

This thesis involves three topics: benchmarking discrete optimization algorithms, empirical analyses of evolutionary computation, and automatic algorithm configuration.

This thesis focuses on enhancing predictions of central nervous system drug exposure using the LeiCNS-PK3.0, a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model.

This monograph focuses on clustering of objects in high-dimensional data, given the restriction that the objects do not cluster on all the attributes, not even on a single subset of attributes, but often on different subsets of attributes in the data.

The invention of neural networks marks a critical milestone in the pursuit of true artificial intelligence. Despite their impressive performance on various tasks, these networks face limitations in learning efficiently as they are often trained from scratch.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. den Hertog

This dissertation presents new cryptographic protocols, which can be divided into two families.

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg, Co-promotor: A.W. van der Vaart, B. de Smit

In this thesis, we show how MRFM can usefully contribute to the field of condensed-matter.

Particles are omnipresent in biopharmaceutical products. In protein-based therapeutics such particles are generally associated with impurities, either derived from the drug product itself (e.g. protein aggregates), or from extrinsic contaminations (e.g. cellulose fibers).

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. van Veen & Prof.dr. W. de Boer (Wageningen University)

The effective treatment of tuberculosis (TB) remains a major challenge to global health.

Increasing the efficiency of gene targeting (GT) as a genome editing tool in plants has been an important goal in plant biotechnology.

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

Promotor: T. Schmidt, Co-promotor: S. J.T. van Noort

Prematurely born neonates require, amongst others, pharmaceutical therapy. Dosing guidelines for these therapies are often based on data from term born neonates or older infants, while these are not necessarily similar to prematurely born neonates.

Promotores: J. Jonkers, K.E. de Visser

During embryonic growth, cells proliferate, differentiate, and collectively migrate to form different tissues at the right position and time in the body.

Lysosomal acid glucosylceramidase (GBA1) is a lysosomal enzyme that degrades glucolipids with its main substrate being glucosylceramide (GlcCer). Defects in the GBA1 gene lead to glycosphingolipidosis Gaucher disease (GD), in which the hydrolysis of GlcCer is impaired and therefore, it accumulates in…

This thesis seeks to combine two different research topics; Multi-Objective Optimization and Complex Network Analysis.