On 26 November 2014, three wall plaques and a lectern were unveiled to commemorate three professors, Cleveringa, Van Holk and Barge, each of whom gave a protest speech against the measures of the German occupier on 26 November 1940.

In a packed Grotius Hall, family and friends came together to pay tribute to young talent at Leiden University. The celebration was part of the annual Dies Natalis Festival for Alumni and gave dozens of visitors the chance to get to know a new generation of academics.

Leiden astronomy professors Ewine van Dishoeck, winner of the Kavli prize 2018, and Tim de Zeeuw, former Director General of the European Southern Observatory, have set up a Named Fund to stimulate young talent in science, both at Leiden University and in the Netherlands Antilles. The couple recently put their signature on the Van Dishoeck-de Zeeuw Fund.

A huge shiny aluminium object stands in the middle of the Polderlab in Oud Ade. Are the researchers trying to make contact with extraterrestrial life? Certainly not; they are using the 'moon landers' to measure whether innovative forms of agriculture reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fleur van Duin works as a PhD student in the Polderlab and is excited about the arrival of the instruments.

A unique multicenter study, including about 3,500 youth between 10 and 25 years old from across the globe, shows that artificial intelligence - specifically machine learning - is able to identify individuals with anxiety disorders based on their unique brain structure.

In 2021, Thijs Bosker and Paul Behrens — both Associate Professors in Environmental Sciences — received funding from the Leiden University Fund and the Gratama Foundation to develop tangible and practical exercises that help people to deal with environmental issues from a local perspective. Now, two years later, they've created a free online course and have reached over 1,000 students by incorporating their materials into existing courses. They tell us about the results so far and what's coming next.

Why do innocent people sometimes spend years in prison? EUREX is a registry of miscarriages of justice in Europe that ultimately led to exonerations. The aim is to prevent such mistakes being made in future. One of the initiators is Leiden legal psychologist Linda Geven.

People with chronic intestinal inflammation, such as Crohn's disease, often have high numbers of the gut bacterium Ruminococcus gnavus (R. gnavus) in their intestines. But why? To answer that question, LUMC researchers have for the first time mapped the complete genetic code (genome) of this bacterium on a large scale. And to accelerate further research on R. gnavus, they are offering all data for free to other researchers.

To cover up their deportation plans which targeted Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis re-opened schools. In her inaugural lecture, historian Sarah Cramsey demonstrates with examples how care was used ‘as a weapon’ during the Holocaust. She also stresses that care is a unifying cement in society and calls for more historical research.