Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise. Until now, AI applications generally have “black box” character: How AI arrives at its results remains hidden. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bajorath, a cheminformatics scientist at the University of Bonn, and his team have developed a method that reveals how certain AI applications work in pharmaceutical research. The results are unexpected: the AI programs largely remembered known data and hardly learned specific chemical interactions when predicting drug potency. The results have now been published in "Nature Machine Intelligence".

With the establishment of a new Bonn-St Andrews Joint Appointment scheme the strategic partnership between the Universities of Bonn and St Andrews has reached a new level of cooperation. Through joint appointments, the two internationally renowned universities create added value for both institutions that is greater than the sum of its parts. The first four researchers in the scheme have now started into their three-year positions. The next round of joint appointments is imminent.

Having German citizenship means different things to boys and girls with an immigration background. Christina Felfe, Professor of Economics at the University of Konstanz, will be giving an online public talk (in German) about these differing impacts, to be held at 5 pm on Tuesday, November 21. Held in German, the event is part of the ReStart Talks series organized by the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence, a joint initiative of the Universities of Bonn and Cologne.

Euclid, the new space telescope launched by the ESA with the involvement of German researchers, has published its first color photographs from outer space. Never before has a telescope been able to produce such sharp astronomical images of such a wide expanse of sky while looking so deep into the distant universe. Researchers from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn are participating in the mission. 

Prof. Dr. Lisa Sauermann from the cluster of excellence Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn has been honored with the von Kaven Award 2023 for her outstanding scientific achievements. The award is presented by the von Kaven Foundation, which is managed by the DFG. Lisa Sauermann was appointed as one of the prestigious Hausdorff Chairs in the cluster of excellence at the University of Bonn only a few months ago. She has been carrying out research and teaching at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Bonn since August. The von Kaven Award includes prize money of 10,000 euros and will be presented on November 17, 2023, at the Gauß Lecture organized by the German Mathematical Society (DMV).

At its November 9 meeting the University of Bonn Senate restored the doctoral titles of four former graduates who suffered persecution under the Nazi regime as Jews or for other ideological reasons. During that time, the University had withdrawn the doctoral titles of three doctoral degree holders from the Faculty of Law and Economics and one from the Faculty of Medicine after they escaped and fled abroad.

Is there a feasible way to enjoy more effective online fraud protection that is more consumer-friendly at the same time? This question is being worked on by University of Bonn researchers in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure (FIZ) in Karlsruhe and the University of Duisburg-Essen, who are jointly developing an online platform that affords better protection against identity data misuse for both consumers and merchants. The project is to receive a total of 1.5 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) over a three-year period.

The University of Bonn has once again appointed an outstanding Schlegel Chair. Lawyer Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Birke Häcker came from the University of Oxford, where she headed the Institute of European and Comparative Law. She will establish new research fields and generate fresh impulses at the University of Bonn. Her main areas of expertise are core private law and comparative law with a special focus on the English common law. However, she is also particularly interested in the interfaces between private law and commercial and business law, tax law, as well as public law. She views herself as a bridge builder between the disciplines and the legal cultures in various different jurisdictions.