Exercising is generally good for your health. In addition, it proves a cheap and effective treatment of common cardiometabolic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Not only because it increases energy levels, it’s anti-inflammatory, too. But what if you can’t do sports or exercise because of a serious illness, like cancer?

Professor of Governance of Sustainability Eefje Cuppen researches sustainability transitions and takes social values such as equity and equality into account. How, for example, can we reduce CO2 in a way that is fair?

Michiel Veldhuis is looking for answers that our world urgently needs. As an ecologist working on the Liveable Planet interdisciplinary programme, he researches the impact of global climate change on the African savanna.

Dominique Moïsi, a professor at King’s College London, will be the first holder of the Owada chair. ‘In the present international context of polarisation and divisions within societies and amongst nations, any effort at bringing Asia and Europe closer to each other is truly important.’

Assistant Professor Maarten Schrama works at Leiden University’s living labs, where biology, environmental sciences and knowledge about agriculture and policy come together. We met him at the new Polderlab to ask him about his research.