This thesis focuses on protoplanetary disks: flattened structures of gas and dust around young stars in which planets are expected to form and grow.

This thesis investigates opinion dynamics on random graphs through the lens of the voter model, a classical interacting particle system used to describe how consensus emerges in networks.

This thesis advances our understanding of lipid uptake, a vital first step in lipid metabolism, by developing innovative click chemistry-based tools to study how immune cells internalize lipids.

The specialisation Science Communication and Society (SCS) concerns science communication in a broad sense. The program focuses on the link between science and society and covers knowledge and skills in the field of science communication.

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

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.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: C.J.M. Muster

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

Lange tijd werd de Nederlandse politiek gedomineerd door drie ideologische stromingen: de christendemocratie, de sociaaldemocratie en het liberalisme. Inmiddels zijn deze hoofdstromen smaller geworden en zijn er ter linker- en rechterzijde diverse nieuwe politieke stromen en stroompjes ontstaan. In…

Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G.L Klinkhamer, Co-promotor: K. Vrieling

SDN (Software-Defined Networking) represents a revolutionary approach to network architecture that enables the dynamic and flexible management of network resources through software-based control. This dissertation introduces the idea of SDN and its southbound protocol OpenFlow, then presents the formal…

In this thesis, the research focuses on the properties of dark matter and dark matter haloes and how they connect with the galaxies we can observe in the Universe.

β-Lactamases are enzymes that can break down β-lactam substrates, such as antibiotics, preventing the use of these antibiotics for the treatment of various infectious diseases. However, some compounds, β-lactamase inhibitors, can block these enzymes allowing for possible treatments using a combination…

Geometric phases lead to a nontrivial interference result when an electron's different quantum mechanical paths choices encircle a magnetic coil in an Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.L. van Heck, Co-Promotor: B.P. Tighe

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

Source: Structure , Volume 22, Issue 8, pp. 1120-1139 (2014)

Pharmaceutical companies, governments and the general public have become increasingly aware that animal models used in drug testing lack vital aspects to serve as an accurate representation of human biology. As models of the human body should become more physiologically relevant, animal models no longer…

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

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg, Co-promotor: A.W. van der Vaart, B. de Smit

Promotor: C.J. ten Cate, Co-promotor: H.W. Slabbekoorn

Songbirds as vocal learners learn their songs and song preference from social tutors⁠. Tutor choice for both song and preference learning are important to characterize for understanding individual learning performance and cultural transmission of song⁠.

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. van Veen & Prof.dr. W. de Boer (Wageningen University)

Promotor: Koen Kuijken Co-promotor: Henk Hoekstra

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

Large carnivores and humans, along with their livestock, have co-existed for thousands of years. However, human population growth and an increase in economic activities are modifying the landscape for large carnivores and their prey.

Promotores: F.H. van Lunteren, F.P. Israel

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

Promotor: I. A. G. Snellen, Co-promotor: M. A. Kenworthy

Humans can see the world through the eyes of other humans and imagine what they know, want, and intend. This competence is known as Theory of Mind.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Dr. M. van der Zee

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

Promotor: H.J.A. Röttgering, Co-promotor: M. Haverkorn

Organic molecules in interstellar space are important as they influence the structure of galaxies and star formations. Studying catalytic processes in space allows us to understand how molecular species are formed and chemically evolved in the interstellar medium and solar system objects.

Regeneration is the ability of an organism to restore damaged or lost tissue with a functional replacement, and without scarring. Many lizards can regenerate their tails.

Large carnivore population is globally declining as a result of the fragmentation of habitat, large prey depletion and retaliatory killing by pastoralists.

Promotores: E. van Dijk, G.R. de Snoo. Co-promotor: H. Staats

One of the most important correlation functions in physics, especially in cosmology, is the energy density, which describes how much energy is present at each point in spacetime due to matter fields. A key contribution to the energy density of the primordial universe comes from gravitational waves (GWs),…

Lysosomal acid glucosylceramidase (GBA1) is a lysosomal enzyme that degrades glucolipids with its main substrate being glucosylceramide (GlcCer). Defects in the GBA1 gene lead to glycosphingolipidosis Gaucher disease (GD), in which the hydrolysis of GlcCer is impaired and therefore, it accumulates in…

The ability to count is a property not often attributed to materials, despite the abundance of memory in materials. Regardless of how a material stores information, it is often difficult to retrieve exactly ‘what’ a material remembers.

All crested and marbled newts (the genus Triturus) suffer from an unusual genetic abnormality, called a balanced lethal system, that kills exactly half of their offspring. How can a trait so disadvantageous have survived millions of years of natural selection?

During post-embryonic development into adults, animals face an environment that fluctuates constantly. For example, in nutrient availability, temperature, and osmolarity (e.g., salt concentration).

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

Promotor: F. Arbab

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

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,…

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg

This thesis addresses the problem of designing performance and energy efficient embedded streaming systems, that is, systems which process a stream of input data coming from the environment and generate a stream of output data going into the environment.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), one of the largest families of membrane proteins, are responsive to a diverse set of physiological endogenous ligands including hormones and neurotransmitters.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper