Veni grants for 21 researchers from Leiden University

The grant enables promising young researchers to further develop their research ideas over the next three years.

Read more about the projects for which our researchers have been awarded funding:

Assessing global mining impacts on freshwater biodiversity: towards sustainable resource extraction

Valerio Barbarossa (Institute of Environmental Sciences)

Freshwater biodiversity is highly impacted by mining activities as the effects of exploitation, alteration and pollution of water bodies can propagate for miles downstream of the mine. The transition to a carbon-neutral economy might further increase such impacts as it requires six times more raw materials than today. This project will quantify for the first time the impacts of mining activities on freshwater biodiversity globally and integrate these impacts in sustainability assessment tools to evaluate biodiversity impacts of energy transition scenarios. This is crucial to guide raw materials sourcing towards more biodiversity-inclusive development strategies and avert the impending biodiversity crisis.

Attack on the matrix: unhealthy connective tissue as a target in Crohn's disease

Marieke Barnhoorn (LUMC)

Crohn's disease, characterised by chronic intestinal inflammation, is currently treated by inhibiting the immune cells in the intestine. However, this treatment does not or hardly help against complications, such as a narrowing of the intestine. Barnhoorn suspects that these complications are caused by a change in the matrix, the connective tissue between all intestinal cells. This is produced by connective tissue cells, which are very numerous in the intestine. This research will explain how this connective tissue is changed in Crohn's disease, and whether we can change the connective tissue cells in such a way that they produce a 'healthy' matrix again.

Teenage risk taking in times of TikTok

Neeltje Blankenstein (Psychologie)

Whereas previous generations of adolescents grew up in a mostly 'offline' world, the current smartphone-generation does not know a world without internet. Adolescents are characterised by heightened risk-taking, yet strikingly little is known about adolescent risk-taking in the online world, such as sharing personal information, online gambling, and sexting. Blankenstein will investigate adolescents' online risk-taking from three theoretical perspectives. Using multiple measuring instruments, Blankenstein study how online risk-taking changes with age, why some adolescents take more online risks than others and how the digital social context influences risk-taking, with the ultimate aim of fostering healthy online behaviour in youth.

Getting preterm infants ready for their first breaths by oxygen administration through the placenta

Janneke Dekker (LUMC)

Prematurely born infants need breathing support to survive after birth. The success of this support is largely dependent on the infant's breathing effort. Preterm infants' breaths are often irregular, but can be stimulated by improving the oxygen level of the body through oxygen administration. However, during irregular breathing the vocal cords close, preventing oxygen to reach the lung. Then, breathing is not stimulated and the risk for ventilation and resuscitation increases. This research investigates whether oxygen administration to the mother, via the placenta, will improve the oxygen level of preterm infants before birth and stimulate breathing directly at birth.

Gateways for humanity: The duty to reason in the automated state

Melanie Fink (Europa Institute)

One of the biggest challenges for the future automated state is its lack of humanity. Algorithmic predictions reduce the complexity of human life to a set of datapoints and reach outcomes in ways often incomprehensible to humans. This subjection to unreasoned state power is dehumanising. The project uses EU reason-giving obligations to design human involvement-requirements in automated processes. In doing this, it broadens the scope of reason-giving obligations so that they can play a central role in addressing the dehumanisation of the automated state.

TOP-CKD: TOwards Personalised medicine for Chronic Kidney Disease

Edouard Fu (LUMC)

This research focuses on optimising the treatment for patients with chronic kidney disease. To reduce their risks for kidney failure requiring dialysis and cardiovascular diseases, medications are required, but their effectiveness varies per individual. To prevent unnecessary exposure and side effects, Fu will investigate which individuals benefit from these medications and which do not. For this purpose, Fu will use new and advanced machine learning techniques and large amounts of health data. Clinical providers will be able to use the results of this research in clinical practice to personalise treatments for each unique person with CKD.

Caring for COVID-19 data: sustaining open data infrastructures

Kathleen Gregory (Centre for Science and Technology Studies)

Data about COVID-19 were everywhere during the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is waning, it is unclear how these data will continue to be managed and made open. This project uses COVID-19 as a case and investigates three different examples of data infrastructures to better understand how data can still be accessed and used.

Vicious viruses and decisive sugars: how antibody-glycosylation protects the nasal mucosa

Willianne Hoepel (LUMC)

Antibodies are important guards in the respiratory mucosa, protecting against common cold viruses. Antibodies contain sugar structures and changes in these sugar structures affects the antibody-function. This proposal investigates sugar structures of antibodies at mucosal sites. Furthermore, it studies the impact on how changes in sugar structures enhances susceptibility for respiratory infections.

Spotlight on schistosomes: altering the immune-worm interaction to boost immunity

Emma Houlder (LUMC)

Globally 200 million people have schistosomiasis, a tropical disease caused parasitic worm infection. Worms can survive for years, and individuals are repeatedly infected. Houlder will investigate how the schistosome worm inhibits dendritic cells (DCs), a key immune cell that could otherwise guide protective immunity. Houlder will then develop a new therapeutic strategy to spotlight the worm to DCs, changing the DC-schistosome interaction. This strategy aims to enable DCs to boost immune responses to schistosomes, providing protection from infection.

Targeting mutant G proteins as a new avenue in small molecule drug discovery in cancer

Willem Jespers (Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research)

G proteins are essential in a healthy cell's signal transduction mechanism and some mutations of these proteins are known to cause cancer. However, in contrast to other mutated proteins, there are no drugs currently on the market that explicitly target these mutated G proteins. Therefore, Jespers proposes finding new small molecule inhibitors that target these proteins selectively using artificial intelligence. These molecules could in the long term become the cancer drug of the future.

Touched by a helping hand: the neurophysiological mechanisms of touch in cooperation

R. Kaldewaij

At a time where online encounters are the norm rather than the exception and discussions about unwanted intimacy are reaching unprecedented levels, the question 'What is the role of touch in social contact?' is more urgent than ever. Better understanding about how touch works neurophysiologically is indispensable in this regard. During our social interactions with others, synchronisation occurs at the physiological level, which is linked to our decisions to cooperate. This project will show how this connection is made at the neural level, and whether the underlying mechanism is the same when touch occurs between two friends or strangers.

Hearing what singing fish tell us about health oceans

Annabelle Kok

Healthy oceans are imperative to the wellbeing of mankind. Ocean health depends on biodiversity, which is threatened by global stressors. To restore ocean health, we need timely predictions of biodiversity change. Traditional biodiversity assessments are time-intensive and weather-dependent, leading to infrequent measurements. Kok will develop a new way to measure marine biodiversity at high resolution: by listening to it. Marine animals such as fish sing during vital parts of their life, allowing us to observe which species are thriving. Fish song will enable us to assess biodiversity change, and direct conservation efforts.

The empire of German idealism

Marie Louise Krogh (Institute for Philosophy)

How have histories of colonisation and imperialism shaped the history of political philosophy? The Empire of German Idealism explores this question in the context of modern German philosophy and provides new perspectives onto some of the most important authors in the philosophical canon: Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. It makes the case that to properly reckon with the colonial heritage of philosophy, we must look beyond specific theories of imperialism or colonisation and fundamentally question how imperial power politics shaped the conceptualisation of political concepts, such a sovereignty, territory, and state.

A fresh look at antiviral treatment

Anne-Grete Märtson (Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research)

Existing and emerging viruses pose a great threat, increasing the demand for safe and effective treatments. Current treatment options often show insufficient treatment effect and cause harmful side effects. To overcome these challenges there is an urgent need for new approaches to expedite development and optimise drug therapies for viral infections. In this project novel laboratory infection models and computational methodologies will be used to improve treatment, prevent resistance, and reduce the need for animal testing and clinical trials. A new framework for optimising existing and testing new antiviral therapies will be developed.

Households and enslavement in the seventeenth-century Dutch empire

Timo McGregor

Many people in early modern Dutch colonies were enslaved through legal and social mechanisms. This often happened within the context of household labour. Legal powers to command and punish domestic workers could be exploited by household heads to transform contractual labour arrangements into perpetual slavery. This project examines colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname and the Moluccas to explore how households served as an ideological, legal, and social framework for imposing and resisting slavery. It will identify how colonial legal ideas and norms sustained different forms of coerced labour and laid ideological foundations for modern forms of domestic slavery.

Protein condensates in confinement: In vitro reflections on the cell interior

Iain Muntz (Leiden Institute of Physics)

Protein condensates are liquid-like droplets which form in the crowded interior of cells, driving many important processes such as transcription and signalling. Often, cell-free studies of these condensates observe their formation and behaviour in non-confining solutions; however, in these solutions condensate size and distribution generally differs from what is observed in cells. Muntz will for the first time engineer confined environments, such as biopolymer networks, to mimic dense cellular environments, which will allow Muntz to identify how these condensates form in these environments, providing crucial insight into how they behave in living cells.

An anthropology of AI at the limits of scientific knowledge

Rodrigo Ochigame (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology)

New techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the practice of science. The fast adoption of AI is generating controversies about what counts as a scientific 'proof'. This project is an anthropological study of researchers who are advancing new uses of AI and redefining the meaning of a proof in their respective fields. It covers three different scientific groups: mathematicians who use AI to discover and prove theorems; astronomers and physicists who use AI to make images of black holes; and ecologists and climate scientists who use AI to try to predict extreme climate events in complex ecosystems, particularly Amazonia.

Every minute counts: a mobile brain scan to recognise stroke in the ambulance and trauma helicopter

Matthias van Oosterom (LUMC)

Acute brain injuries, such as stroke and brain trauma, are the most common cause of disabilities and a major cause of death. Due to the vulnerability of our brain, enormous amounts of healthy life is lost due to delays in diagnosis and treatment selection. Therefore, this research project investigates if a mobile magnetic detection technology will enable us to quickly determine brain injury outside of the hospital, enabling faster and more efficient treatment.

Back to the future in times of transition

Dorine Schellens (Centre for the Arts in Society)

How did people across Eastern Europe imagine the future during the transitions of the 1980s and 1990s? The umbrella term 'post-communism' does not provide an answer to this question. This project explores how writers and cultural theorists saw the potential future of their societies from the era of perestroika until the late 1990s. By comparing Russia and Eastern Germany, this study maps the diverse future scenarios envisioned in the former communist region. By examining cultural reflections on transitions in the recent past, the project seeks to contribute to present-day societal debates about the urgency of imagining alternative futures.

Coherent states and frames for exponential Lie groups

J.T. van Velthoven

Harmonic analysis is concerned with decomposing complicated signals into basic signals. The basic signals that can be used for such a decomposition depend in a subtle manner on geometric properties of the ambient environment. This research aims to unravel the fine structure of signal decompositions for various geometries. It is expected that the project bridges a gap between what has so far been established in concrete and abstract theories.

The age of information overload: how do we control what we say?

X. Zheng

We have all been there: you are in the middle of saying something, and suddenly a notification pops up on your phone. Your attention shifts momentarily and you lose track of what you were going to say. In our information-saturated world, it is challenging to avoid all the distractions surrounding us while speaking. How do our brains maintain focus while translating thoughts into words? The researcher will use neuroimaging techniques to investigate how our brain 'gates' access to working memory during speaking and to discover how we control our language.

The Veni is a personal scientific grant of up to EUR 320,000. It is part of the NWO Talent Programme and is aimed researchers who have recently obtained their PhDs. A total of 174 researchers have been awarded a Veni grant this year.

• awards
• research university
• veni
• veni-grant

Mail the editor