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.

Climate change is a challenge for both current and future generations. New biological resources have to be developed in order to meet the demand for energy as well as the demand for food.

An Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) is a highly luminous region at the center of a galaxy, powered by the accretion into a supermassive black hole and emitting energy from radio waves to gamma rays, often outshining the host galaxy.

In times of hardships or crisis, local people know how to deal with it using their resourcefulness. Although efforts are sometimes made by the government to help them, they are fully aware that community support is at least equally important.

We investigate the buildup of galaxies from various vantage points. The first two chapters focus on the stellar content of galaxies, especially the distribution of stellar masses at birth and potential variations therein in various galactic environments.

This thesis presents the systematics, epidermal defense, and bioprospecting of wild orchids.

Promotor: H.P. Spaink, Co-Promotor: A.H. Meijer

Plants are colonized by an astounding number of microorganisms that can provide different life-support functions, including nutrient acquisition and protection against (a)biotic stresses like drought or pathogen attack.

In 2018, the number of mobile phone users will reach about 4.9 billion. Assuming an average of 5 photos taken per day using the built-in cameras would result in about 9 trillion photos annually.

In the last decades, activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) has emerged as a powerful chemical tool that may aid the ever-challenging drug discovery process.

Discovery and development of Central Nervous System (CNS) drugs is hampered by high attrition rates.

The focus of this thesis is how stars like our Sun and planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth are formed.

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.A.G.J. Orrit

Heart failure is a major health care problem with high mortality.

To gain more insight into the evolutionary development of orchid flowers and fruits, the orchid species Erycina pusilla was studied. The evolutionary origin of the median petaloid sepal, the callus on the labellum, and the stelidia was studied.

The applications of studying the early development of insects range from agriculture to material science.

The glycosylation reaction is a pivotal reaction in creating new and complex oligosaccharides.

Antibiotic resistance, caused by widespread use of antibiotics, leads to bacterial infections that are difficult, if not impossible, to treat and is a major worldwide health concern.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.P. Abrahams, Co-Promotor: N.S. Pannu

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.

Traditionally, vaccines are administered intramuscularly using conventional hypodermic needles, which cause pain and distress. Microneedles are very short needles (smaller than 1 mm) that are practically invisible to the naked eye.

1. To what extent do metallic NPs added to soil extractions change the activity, abundance, or community composition of microbes? 2. How do the effects of metallic NPs on soil microbes differ from the effects of the ions shedding from corresponding NPs?

In this thesis, mathematical modeling and simulation was applied as a tool to inform quantitative decision making in oncology drug discovery and development.

Promotors: Prof.dr. P.J. Punt, Prof.dr. C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: S.J.T. van Noort

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

The soil-dwelling, filamentous bacteria of the genus Streptomyces are renowned for their production of useful secondary metabolites including antibiotics. The work described in this thesis provides new insights on the role and regulation of antibiotic production and resistance in these bacteria.

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

Soil is a home for an unbelievable diversity and abundance of microbial life that is essential for supporting life on our planet.

Development of GHG calculator for bio-electricity and heat.

One of the key quests in astronomy is to study the growth and evolution of galaxies across cosmic time. Radio observations provide a powerful means of studying the formation of stars and subsequent buildup of distant galaxies, in a way that is unbiased by the presence of dust.

The redox-conversion reaction of metal-disulfide and metal-thiolate complexes are important, as they may shed light on electron-transfer reactions that often occur in Nature.

Multicopper oxidase, laccase, can efficiently reduce oxygen to water and are mostly used in the enzymatic biofuel cells.

Tracing the evolution of the molecular gas content in galaxies is critical for a complete understanding of galaxy formation and evolution, as it provides the direct fuel for star formation. Studies of high-redshift (z>1) molecular gas reservoirs, most commonly traced by carbon monoxide (CO), have seen…

In populations with a seed-bank, individuals can temporarily become dormant and refrain from reproduction until they can become active again. The repository of all dormant individuals in the population is called the seed-bank. Seed-banks are observed in many taxa, including plants, bacteria and other…

Op 11 november 2021 verdedigde Mariana Gkliati het proefschrift 'Systemic Accountability of the European Border and Coast Guard'. Het promotieonderzoek is begeleid door promotoren prof.dr. P. Rodrigues en prof.dr. L. Besselink (UvA).

Promotores: W. Jiskoot, F. Ossendorp

Less than 1 in 10 drug candidates that enter phase 1 clinical trials actually gets approved for human use.

The recently introduced nature-originated deep eutectic solvents, so-called natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) are considered as truly green solvents, which composed of natural ingredients found abundantly in organisms.

The clinical potential of applying synthetic lethality to cancer treatment is famously demonstrated by the BRCA1/PARP1 paradigm: a tumor specific defect in BRCA1 – a component of the DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair pathway homologous recombination (HR) – results in a remarkable sensitivity to PARP1…

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.

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

Leiden University and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management are involved in a collaboration in the form of a research project titled 'Data-Driven Risk Assessment in Infrastructure Networks'

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Prof.dr. J.C.T. Eijkel (Twente University)

Interactive exploration of large volumes of data is increasingly common, as data scientists attempt to extract interesting information from large opaque data sets. This scenario presents a difficult challenge for traditional database systems, as (1) nothing is known about the query workload in advance,…

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

This monograph focuses on clustering of objects in high-dimensional data, given the restriction that the objects do not cluster on all the attributes, not even on a single subset of attributes, but often on different subsets of attributes in the data.

One of the key limitations of the direct imaging of exoplanets at small angular separations are quasi-static speckles that originate from evolving non-common path aberrations (NCPA) to which the primary adaptive optics system is inherently blind. The main focus of this thesis is the development and…