The EU’s Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall visited Bonn on December 1 to find out about the research being done in the University of Bonn’s PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence. Discussions focused on three main topics: digital agriculture, sustainable food systems and preserving biodiversity.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is setting up a new Research Training Group (RTG) at the University of Bonn. Entitled “Entwicklung und Epileptogenese von Dysplasien im Zusammenspiel distinkter ZNS-Zelltypen” (“Development and Epileptogenesis of Dysplasias in the Interplay of Distinct CNS Cell Types”), the program for doctoral students will see early-career researchers investigate experimental approaches for treating forms of epilepsy that do not respond to existing treatments. The DFG is to fund the RTG to the tune of some €6.1 million over the next five years.

The Bonn–St Andrews Joint Academic Appointments Scheme, now in its third year, continues to strengthen the strategic alliance between the University of Bonn and the University of St Andrews. This innovative partnership initiative allows colleagues from both universities to spend 20 percent of their time over three years teaching and conducting research at the partner institution.

Two Collaborative Research Centers (CRCs)—Transregio (TRR) 224 “Economic Perspectives on Societal Challenges” and TRR 228 “Future Rural Africa”—have secured four more years’ funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and are thus set to enter their third funding period. The first project, CRC-TRR 224, sees researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Mannheim collaborating to open up new economic avenues for some of the challenges facing society, while the second, CRC-TRR 228, involves researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Cologne working on shaping the future in rural Africa.

Finding somewhere to live at the start of the semester remains a major challenge for many students in Bonn. Even though the winter semester has already been under way a few weeks, many young people are still hunting for an affordable room. This is especially true of international students, who often arrive just before the semester starts and have hardly any time to mount a detailed search. The University of Bonn, the Studierendenwerk Bonn and the General Students’ Committee (AStA) are therefore issuing an urgent joint appeal to all private landlords and landladies in the city, asking them to offer up their available accommodation to students. A new online housing platform has also been launched for this purpose.

Only ten teams nationwide will receive exclusive access to the European exascale supercomputer. With the HoMe project, AI research in Bonn is sending a strong signal in the fields of vision, robotics, and generative AI.

The Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects for 2025 was published yesterday and puts the University in the top 10 in Germany for 12—over half—of the subjects assessed. In five of these subjects, it has even made it into the top five.

Dr. Varun Venkataramani of the Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University and Dr. Niklas Klümper of the University Hospital Bonn have been awarded the Lisec Artz Prize for their outstanding cancer research. The University of Bonn Foundation and the University of Bonn Faculty of Medicine presented the awards to the two researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) as part of the Cluster Science Days event held by the ImmunoSensation² Cluster of Excellence. The prize is worth a total of 15,000 euros.