Researchers at the Faculty of Science work at the frontiers of knowledge every day, tackling today's major societal challenges. Their work is recognised through grants, prizes and other awards. We highlight some of these achievements below.
More than €235,000 for research into protection against protein clumps in Parkinson's disease
Physicist Martina Huber and chemist Anne Sarah Wentink have received €235,446.20 from the ParkinsonFonds for a two-year research project investigating how cells may protect themselves against harmful protein clumps involved in Parkinson's disease.
In Parkinson's disease, the protein alpha-synuclein can misfold and clump together. The small clumps that form in the process, known as oligomers, appear to be particularly harmful to nerve cells. The researchers will investigate whether cells can break down these small protein clumps before they develop into larger aggregates.
In doing so, they hope to gain a better understanding of how cells protect themselves against these harmful proteins, and why this protective mechanism may become less effective as we age.
NWO-KIC grants : More sustainable production inspired by nature
Two Leiden biologists have received an NWO grant through the KIC programme Biochemical Diversity.
More sustainable agriculture
Paco Barona Gomez will investigate how the enormous chemical diversity found in nature can be harnessed to make agriculture more sustainable.
Together with public and private partners, he will map the natural substances and biological processes involved in interactions between organisms. With this knowledge, the researchers aim to identify new ways of applying substances and processes from nature to make production processes more sustainable, for example in crop protection.
More sustainable cellulose recycling
Arthur Ram will develop new, energy-efficient enzymes that can break down cellulose. Cellulose is an important component of materials such as wood, paper and cotton. Breaking it down is necessary to reuse or process these materials. The new enzymes are designed to do this at lower temperatures and with fewer chemicals. They are produced by fungi that grow on industrial waste streams that would otherwise go to waste. The researchers will test the technology for applications including processing cellulose from wastewater and more sustainable textile treatment.
Barona Gomez's SPICE project (Spatial Profiling of Interactions and Chemical Ecological diversity for sustainable agriculture) and Ram's MILDCELL project are two of the seven projects funded by NWO in this funding round. A total of €8 million has been made available for these projects.
