Barrier function is the natural role of the skin. The lipid matrix present in the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum is important for this function.

Streptomyces are multicellular, Gram-positive bacteria in the phylum of actinobacteria which produce a high amount of bioactive natural products of which the expression is tightly coordinated with the life cycle.

Glucocorticoids are potent anti-inflammatory drugs widely used clinically to treat various inflammatory and immune conditions. However, two main clinical problems limit their use. GCs trigger severe side effects and they induce acquired glucocorticoid resistance, especially during chronic systemic treatment…

Cardiovascular syndromes are the major cause of death in Western societies.

In this thesis, I focused on studying the above- and belowground interactions of J. vulgaris from a plant-soil feedback (hereafter, PSF) perspective. I investigated the temporal variation of negative PSF and examined the effects of root-associated bacteria on plant performance and aboveground herbiv…

A modern ship design process is subject to a wide variety of constraints such as safety constraints, regulations, and physical constraints.

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.

This dissertation presents the synthesis and evaluation of antibody recognition for various capsular polysaccharide (CP) fragments of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).

In this thesis we study bistable reaction-diffusion equations on lattice domains.

This thesis involves three topics: benchmarking discrete optimization algorithms, empirical analyses of evolutionary computation, and automatic algorithm configuration.

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

Principles of Environmental Sciences provides a comprehensive picture of the principles, concepts and methods that are applicable to problems originating from the interaction between the living and non-living environment and mankind. Both the analysis of such problems and the way solutions to environmental…

Filamentous Actinobacteria, such as Streptomyces, produce a plethora of chemically diverse bioactive metabolites that have found applications across medicine, agriculture and biotechnology.

Ethiopian wolves are endangered diurnal Afroalpine rodent hunters. I investigated the interaction between wolves, rodents and human land use in Borena Sayint National Park (BSNP), Abune Yosef and Aboi Gara in Ethiopia.

Sewer pipes are an essential infrastructure in modern society and their proper operation is important for public health. To keep sewer pipes operational as much as possible, periodical inspections for defects are performed.

Promotors: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck, Prof.dr. B. Sendhoff (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

Promotor: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck

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

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

Promotor: M.K. Richardson, Co-Promotor: F. Witte

Streptomyces bacteria are a valuable source of natural products, many of which are used in the clinic or in biotechnology.

This thesis investigates how quantum, quantum-inspired, and hybrid quantum-classical computation can enhance key points of the automated machine learning (AutoML) pipeline under the constraints of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

If X is a locally compact Hausdorff space, then a representation of the complex C* algebra C_0(X) on a Hilbert space $H$ is given by a spectral measure that takes its values in the orthogonal projections on $H$.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. C.A. Mandemakers, Co-Promotor: G. Bloothooft

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: A.J. Knobbe

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.

Phosphorylation affects all four major biomolecules – proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids – and plays a pivotal role in the most fundamental cellular functions.

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.

Promotor: W. T. F. den Hollander, F. H. J. Redig

Promotores: T.H.W. Bäck, Y. Tan, Co-promotor: M.T.M. Emmerich

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a maintenance policy that uses the past, current, and prognosticated health condition of an asset to predict when timely maintenance should occur.

Promotor: P.D. Grünwald

Promotor: H.P. Spaink, A.H. Meijer Co-promotor: R. Marin-Juez

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

Optimization tasks in practice have multifaceted challenges as they are often black box, subject to multiple equality and inequality constraints and expensive to evaluate.

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

The increasing competition in the automotive industry requires the tailored, swift development of technologically sophisticated vehicles. Therefore, the computationally expensive state-of-the-art simulation technologies are combined with optimization algorithms. An example of a real-world optimization…

Constraint multi-objective optimization with a limited budget for function evaluations is challenging. This thesis tackles this problem by proposing new optimization algorithms. These algorithms are applied on holistic ship design problems. This helps naval architects balance objectives like cost, efficiency,…

This dissertation investigates the energy and material related impacts of the transition towards a low-carbon heating system in the Netherlands, in the context of its 2050 climate and circular economy policy goals.

De Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Promotor: A. Kros

To an algebraic curve C over the complex numbers one can associate a non-negative integer g, the genus, as a measure of its complexity.

Promotores: A.H. Meijer, H.P. Spaink

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

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-promotor: J.B.F. Juurlink

Promotor: R. Gill, Co-promotor: P. Massart

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.

A common method to solve expensive function evaluation problem is using Bayesian Global Optimization, instead of Evolutionary Algorithms.

The filamentous bacteria Streptomyces are widespread inhabitants of terrestrial soils.

A sustainable resource management is an essential aspect to satisfy the current human needs without compromising the needs of future generations.