Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle) produces valuable monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) such as vincristine and vinblastine, crucial for cancer treatment.

Plants are colonized by an astounding number of microorganisms that can provide different life-support functions, including nutrient acquisition and protection against (a)biotic stresses like drought or pathogen attack.

This dissertation combines the use of defined microenvironments, high-resolution fluorescence microscopy, and time-resolved analysis, to study intracellular and cellular motility.

A modern ship design process is subject to a wide variety of constraints such as safety constraints, regulations, and physical constraints.

This thesis advances our understanding of lipid uptake, a vital first step in lipid metabolism, by developing innovative click chemistry-based tools to study how immune cells internalize lipids.

We find ourselves in an era of transition, not just towards a more computing- and data-driven society but also away from unsustainable fossil fuels as an energy source.

Every organisms in the tree of life faces the same challenge: the length of its DNA exceeds the volume of the cell it needs to fit in. Several strategies have evolved to solve this problem, one of them being the expression of proteins that bind and organize the DNA.

Hot astrophysical plasma is ubiquitous in the Universe, from comets in our Solar system to the largest scale structures -- the cosmic web filaments. These hot plasmas, with the temperature of a few millions of degrees, are often observed in the X-ray wavelength range.

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: C.M. Soares, A.J. Knobbe

Anthropogenic noise negatively affects wildlife in a wide range of taxonomic groups.

This research focuses on the distribution of chemical elements in protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planets. These disks form around young stars and contain gas and dust, from which planets grow. Ice plays a crucial role in planet formation, aiding the clumping of dust particles and influencing…

PNEC-pro is a user-friendly screening tool for professionals dealing with the assessment of surface water quality. The tool calculates local, watertype specific no-effect concentrations (PNEC) of copper, lead, nickel and zinc based on biotic ligand models (BLMs).

Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) is the second most common type of breast cancer.

We have studied the impact of particle shape anisotropy, multivalent interactions and flexibility on systems of micron-sized colloidal particles.

Catalysis is of extreme relevance in the production of everyday materials and plays a central role in many aspects of our life.

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel, Co-promotor: D. Claessen

This proposed research uses ego-documents from visual artists that were not intended for publication to reassess the scholarly debate on the demise of the Russian Avant-garde aesthetic in the twenties and early thirties of the 20th century.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.G.E.M. Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

Leiden en Den Haag zijn echte studentensteden die van jouw studententijd een onvergetelijke tijd maken. Lees snel verder waarom.

The electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an essential half-reaction for the utilization of hydrogen as a sustainable fuel, via the conversion of hydrogen to electrons and protons facilitated by the ORR. In the most common fuel cells, the ORR is requires high loadings of non-abundant platinum…

In some condensed matter systems, such as the surface of a 3D topological insulator, the electrons are effectively massless and we must necessarily use the massless Dirac equation to describe them.

A sustainable resource management is an essential aspect to satisfy the current human needs without compromising the needs of future generations.

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.

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

This dissertation consists of two parts, each of which considers a different research area related to random interval maps. In the first part we are interested in random interval maps that are critically intermittent.

Control of infectious diseases poses continuous challenges for human health.

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water

Promotor: J. Zaanen, Co-Promotor: V. Juricic

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

Promotor: B. van de Water

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

The physical origin of the dozens of stellar-mass binaries, the mergers of which have been detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration via gravitational waves, is still unknown.

Bacterial biocatalysis constitutes a sustainable alternative for high-value chemicals production by enabling the utilization of renewable feedstocks.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.L. van Heck, Co-Promotor: B.P. Tighe

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. den Hertog

Advanced sensing techniques require graphene with high quality and well-controlled surface chemistry.

Retorica is overal. In de Tweede Kamer, in de rechtbank, en in de collegezaal; maar ook op de markt, op Twitter, en op Facebook. Mensen proberen elkaar steeds weer te overtuigen met argumenten, te verleiden met emoties, en te imponeren met een gunstige zelfpresentatie. De minor Retorica bestudeert de…

Acute cardiovascular syndromes, including myocardial infarction or stroke, are the principal cause of death in the Western society. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is atherosclerosis, which is caused by the accumulation of lipids and inflammatory cells in the vessel wall, in…

In this Ph.D. thesis, we characterized two novel upstream regulators of JUB1, HB40, and HB22, in Arabidopsis thaliana. In Chapter 2, we described functions of HB40 in modulating growth and development via the regulation of JUB1 and GA inactivation genes GA2OXs.

Hydrodesulfurization (HDS) is an ubiquitous part of oil refining that ensures that fuels are cleaned of impurities and environment release of pollutants such as SOx and NOx gasses are minimized.

Promotores: S.F. Portegies Zwart, E. M. Rossi

Metal complexes and 2D materials like graphene were combined to produce structures that can function as sensors.

Arithmetic geometry concerns the number-theoretic properties of geometric objects defined by polynomials. Mathematicians are interested in the rational solutions to these geometric objects.

This work describes several studies into the electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR), both regarding mechanistical aspects and catalyst stability considerations. Mechanistic insights into carbon-carbon bond formation on a silver catalyst are described in Ch 2, were we find an acetaldehyde-like surface…

This thesis describes the development of improved formulations and alternative delivery strategies for polio vaccination.

The genetic information of all living organisms is contained in their DNA. Cells modify the degree of DNA compaction by epigenetics, which largely determines what genes are read out and which genes are transcriptionally silent.

This thesis investigates the application of deep learning techniques in image analysis across various domains, focusing on four main themes: feature extraction, classification, segmentation, and integration, demonstrating the transformative potential of these technologies.

Single-layer graphene (SLG) has attracted considerable interest as a proton exchange membrane for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), owing to its atomic thickness, mechanical robustness, and unique proton permeability.

This thesis is a (biased) journey through very different topics in astrophysics: quasars and new populations of active galactic nuclei, gravitational waves from merging black holes, and protoplanetary discs around young stars.