Op 16 juni 2020 verdedigde Andrea Varga haar proefschrift 'Establishing State Responsibility in the Absence of Effective Government'. Het promotieonderzoek is begeleid door promotoren prof. dr. N.J. Schrijver en prof. dr. F. Baetens (University of Oslo).

While ecosystems have concrete benefits for human society, these benefits are typically overlooked in decision-making.

Plants and their pollinators form complex interaction networks. Within these networks, species differ widely in the number of species they interact with.

The work presented in this thesis is based on ALMA surveys of protoplanetary disks in three star-forming regions: Lupus, OMC-2, and NGC 2024.

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

This thesis attempts to interrogate post-1991-2015 political development in Ethiopia, focusing on the political discourses espoused by the government and opposition, using the discourse analysis method and securitization theory.

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-promotoren: M.F.E. de Jeu, S.D. Silvestrov

Astronomical observations of cold regions in the universe show a rich inventory of ices. Part of these ices may end up on planets like our own, but in that journey they will be exposed to considerable amounts of radiation.

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.

The research described in this thesis focused on identifying novel drug targets and synergistic combinations for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a virulent subtype of breast cancer with a dismal prognosis and limited therapeutic options.

The study of orchid flowers, fruits, and inflorescences is crucial due to the remarkable diversity of orchid species and their unique adaptations to pollinators and seed dispersers. However, our understanding of the evolution and development of these organs within the orchid family remains limited.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof.dr. A.H. Meijer

The prevalence of obesity (BMI >40 kg/m2) has increased rapidly over the recent years, not only in adults, but also in children and adolescents.

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Schilthuizen

In the last decade, the redox interconversion between metal thiolate and disulfide compounds has been extensively investigated for copper, but not for other transition metal ions.

The main focus of the thesis is the discovery and development of novel inhibitors of bacterial metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs).

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

Promotor: J.M. van den Broek Co-promotor: M.C. de Vries

This thesis aims to demonstrate how the achromatic nature and design flexibility of liquid-crystal optics can be used to improve high-contrast imaging instruments to facilitate detailed exoplanet characterization.

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. Its properties cannot be explained with the known laws of physics and elementary particles.

Promotores: Prof.dr. H.J.M. de Groot, Prof.dr. J. Matysik (Universitaet Leipzig)

The development process of any software has become extremely important not just in the IT industry, but in almost every business or domain of research.

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

The soil ecosystem consists of the largest reservoir of biodiversity on Earth.

Promotor: M. Danhof, Co-promotor: E.C.M. de Lange

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

The energy system is at the heart of two of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: decreasing CO2 emissions to meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement while fulfilling the growing energy demand associated with the economic aspirations of a growing world population.

The major and ultimate aim of metabolomics is to obtain an answer to a specific biological or clinical question.

Promotor: A.P. IJzerman

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

Assessing the risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) solely on the basis of experimental assays is time-consuming, resource intensive, and constrained by ethical considerations (such as the principles of the 3Rs of animal testing). The adoption of computational toxicology in this field is a high p…

Multi-objective evolutionary computation aims to find high quality (Pareto optimal) solutions that represent the trade-off between multiple objectives.

Microbiome composition of the spermosphere and the rhizosphere of wild and modern bean accessions grown in an agricultural and a native soil from Colombia was characterized by metagenomics and cultivation-dependent approaches.

In design optimization problems, engineers typically handcraft design representations based on personal expertise, which leaves a fingerprint of the user experience in the optimization data. Thus, learning this notion of experience as transferrable design features has potential to improve the performance…

Artificial intelligence algorithms govern in subtle, yet fundamental ways, the way we live and are transforming our societies. The promise of efficient, low‐cost or ‘neutral’ solutions harnessing the potential of big data has led public bodies to adopt algorithmic systems in the provision of public…

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.

Promotor: A.P. IJzerman

This thesis focuses on using liposomes in two different treatment strategies; vaccination (or immunotherapy) and delivery of a small molecule, and in two different disease models; cancer and atherosclerosis.

Op 11 juni 2020 verdedigde Sabine Witting haar proefschrift 'Child Sexual Abuse in the Digital Era: Rethinking Legal Frameworks and Transnational Law Enforcement Collaboration'. Het promotieonderzoek is begeleid door promotoren prof.mr. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen en prof.dr.mr. S. van der Hof.

Possible improvements for the assessment of abiotic depletion in LCA.

In the thesis the dynamics of strategies is studied from two perspectives.In the first part of the thesis strategies are considered to be opinions present in a community.

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,…

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…

We strive to address the challenge of constructing a modeling language to write software which can take advantage of recent hardware developments (multicore, cloud) without compromising in its abstraction levels.

The last decades it is increasingly recognized that acute as well as chronic postoperative pain is an important problem. Treatment and prevention of postoperative pain is a challenge, especially in special patient populations where there is only limited guidance on how to optimally use opioids.

Natural vanilla flavor is one of the most important in the world. However, the cost of this flavor is expensive. Production of this flavor by alternative methods, could reduce the cost.

Promotor: J. van der Greef; Co-promotor: E. van Wijk, M. Wang

An important part of the SCS specialisation is the internship period. Students will get the opportunity to get to know the field and to apply what they have learned during the courses.

For centuries astronomers studied the Universe by collecting light. Nowadays, we are living in times of great technological advancements, which allow us to explore our Universe in a new way - though gravitational wave radiation.