This thesis describes the role of pollution, specifically neonicotinoid insecticides, as an actor of the ongoing biodiversity decline.

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are mechanical waves that travel along the surface of a material and find many applications in modern technologies due to the ease of excitation on piezoelectric substrates via interdigital transducers (IDTs).

Plant exudates appeared long time ago in the history line of life in the early Devonian. They are typical saps produced by specialized cells.

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram-negative plant pathogen belonging to the family Rhizobiaceae, is the causative agent of crown gall disease, which can affect many plant species including agronomically important ones.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most pressing challenges that humanity faces in the coming decades.

Promotor: G.A. van der Marel, Co-promotor: J.D.C. Codée

Over the last decades, aviation safety has improved strongly. As a downside, airline pilots do not have as many opportunities to develop through experience the competencies that they need in critical situations.

The development of new environmentally sound technologies is seen as a key route towards achieving sustainability.

Understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems is one of the most fundamental challenges in astronomy. To directly image and study young exoplanets and the circumstellar disks they form from, dedicated high-contrast imaging instruments are built.

There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, and ultimately experiments are needed to verify or falsify these interpretations.

Promotores: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Prof.dr. L. Kaper (UvA)

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.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

Promotor: Prof.dr. F.S. de Boer, Co-promotor: D. Clarke

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.

Promotors: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. H. Leirs (Univ. Antwerpen)

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

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

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.

Humans can see the world through the eyes of other humans and imagine what they know, want, and intend. This competence is known as Theory of Mind.

In this thesis it is posed that the central object of preference discovery is a co-creative process in which the Other can be represented by a machine. It explores efficient methods to enhance introverted intuition using extraverted intuition's communication lines.

Industrial manufacturing processes, such as the production of steel or the stamping of car body parts, are complex semi-batch processes with many process steps, machine parameters and quality indicators.

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. B.R. Katzy, Prof.dr. H.J. van den Herik, Prof.dr. G.H. Baltes (University of Applied Sciences Konstanz)

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-promotor: O. van Gaans

Promotores: Prof.dr. G.A. van der Marel, M. van Heel

We consider the propagation of electrical signals through nerve fibres.

The increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics necessitates the discovery of new medicines.

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. P. IJzerman, Co-Promotor: L.H. Heitman

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Schmidt

Promotores: K.J. Batenburg, B. Koren

Promotor: M. Danhof Co-promotor: O.E. Della Pasqua

The aromatic infrared bands (AIBs) seen throughout the interstellar medium (ISM) are generally thought to be carried by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their nitrogen analogues (PANHs).

Despite being the object of intense study, embryonic development has been difficult to model due to a number of reasons. First, complex tissues can be comprised of many cell types, of which we probably only know a subset.

Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander Co-Promotor: F.M. Spieksma

Promotores: W. Th. F. den Hollander, M.O. Heydenreich

Balsaminaceae is a diverse plant family characterized by a huge floral morphological diversity.

In this Yearbook you will find some fascinating examples of what was done in 2021, not only by ourselves, but also by our international colleagues.

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. Its properties cannot be explained with the known laws of physics and elementary particles.

Promotores: B. van de Water; P. Hogendoorn; J. Bovée Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

Self-assembly is an abundant process in nature and is vital to many processes in living organisms.

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

Electrocatalysis allows for storing electricity or converting it into chemical bonds, producing chemical building blocks and fuels using renewable resources.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: A.J. Knobbe

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.

Cancer is considered the silent pandemic of the 21st century and the second leading cause of death worldwide.

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg

The sequence-dependence of biomolecular interactions involving nucleic acids and proteins is essential for numerous processes inside the cell. Insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms have been obtained using various biochemical and biophysical methods on two different levels — bulk and sin…