In this thesis, the role of plant-mediated soil legacy effects in shaping aboveground plant-insect interactions was investigated.

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

The investigation into the bidirectional communication between the gut and its host is a rapidly growing area of research, attracting considerable attention for its potential to provide crucial insights into health and disease.

The mycorrhizal symbiosis is among the most widespread species interactions on Earth⁠. This thesis focuses on orchid mycorrhiza, a unique mycorrhizal type that has caught scientists’ attention for centuries⁠.

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

Promotor: G.F.A. Kersten, W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: B. Metz

The name ‘Jambi flora’ refers to fossil plants found as part of a rock formation from the Early Permian (296 million years old), located in the Jambi Province of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. Achucarro

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.

Marine sponges are important members of reef ecosystems, as they play ecological roles that are essential for the health of the reef.

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.Th.F. den Hollander, Co-promotor: R. Fernandez.

Continuous optimization is never easy: the exact solution is always a luxury demand and the theory of it is not always analytical and elegant.

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.

Understanding interactions in quantum many-body systems remains one of the most profound and difficult challenges in condensed matter physics.

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.T.F. den Hollander

The following report discusses a survey on the topic of the Sustainable Development Goals that was distributed among researchers at Leiden University in the month of November 2021.

Interactive exploration of large volumes of data is increasingly common, as data scientists attempt to extract interesting information from large opaque data sets. This scenario presents a difficult challenge for traditional database systems, as (1) nothing is known about the query workload in advance,…

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, Co-Promotor: Dr. Young Hae Choi

With the advent of multicore processors and data centers, computer hardware has become increasingly parallel, allowing one to run multiple pieces of software at the same time on different machines. Coordination of these pieces is best expressed in a coordination language as an explicit interaction protocol…

The focus of this thesis is how stars like our Sun and planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth are formed.

This thesis describes the use of bioorthogonal proteins in immunological settings. It provides an introduction towards the field of protein modification, which was used throughout the thesis for the expression of proteins containing unnatural amino acids.

Promotor: B.van de Water, Co-promotor: L.S.Price

In this thesis we explore machine and deep learning approaches that address keychallenges in high dimensional problem areas and also in improving accuracy in wellknown problems. In high dimensional contexts, we have focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

Technologies that help to enhance our educational environments can be found everywhere.

When observing star-forming galaxies, we are not only seeing stellar light, but we also see how this interacts with galactic gas and dust. This thesis contains studies of the stellar, nebular and dust properties of low mass star-forming galaxies.

Biological cells, the basic building blocks of all life forms, are surrounded by a lipid membrane. More than half of the membrane is occupied by membrane proteins, which can regulate the cell functionality through specific arrangements.

Humans and songbirds learn their vocalizations early in life by exposure to the vocalizations of adult conspecifics. Often, better learning outcomes are achieved with live, social, tutors than with audio-only exposure to vocalizations.

Statistical considerations guide the design and implementation of the experiments that scientists perform. For instance, in a clinical trial about a the efficacy of a treatment, its effect in a certain minimum amount of patients has to be observed in order to make confident assertions about the efficacy…

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. L.J. Slikkerveer

Promotor: Prof.dr. S. Haring

The field of exoplanet research is rapidly advancing through the development of new technology, observing techniques, and post-processing methods.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. M.R.V. Chaudron (Chalmers Univ., Sweden)

The four possible segments A, T, C and G that link together to form DNA molecules, and with their ordering encode genetic information, are not only different in name, but also in their physical and chemical properties.

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

Astronomical observations of cold regions in the universe show a rich inventory of ices. Part of these ices may end up on planets like our own, but in that journey they will be exposed to considerable amounts of radiation.

This thesis applies data mining in commercial settings in the telecommunications industry.

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

This thesis explores different avenues to develop insurmountable antagonists for CC Chemokine Receptors, such as CCR1, CCR2 and CCR5.

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

Climate change is one of the largest challenges faced by humanity. To combat this research into alternatives to fossil fuels is ongoing. Dihydrogen is considered a good alternative fuel, since its burning only forms water.

Promotor: E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

The key characteristic of active matter is the motion of an emergent collection (such as a flock of birds), which is driven by the consumption of energy by its active components (i.e. individual birds).

Microscopic insight on lipid-based nanomedicine in vivo remains limited to the perception of the knowledge that could be obtained: if we interpret only what we see, then we only believe to know. Although believing to know encapsulates an undefined amount of uncertainty in the exploration of lipid-based…

Hydrogen fuel cells are expected to be pivotal in the energetic transition towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. However, their industrial scalability is severely hindered by the high cost and degradation rate of platinum catalysts, one of their key components. Addressing this…

Promotor: Prof.dr. D. Bouwmeester

Promotor: G.J. Kramer Co-Promotor: E.G.M. Kleijn

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.

Endocannabinoids are lipid messengers that modulate various physiological functions by activating the cannabinoid CB1 and CB2 receptors. While the metabolism of endocannabinoids and their action at the CB receptors is fairly well studied, the molecular mechanisms governing their release and transport…