Six clusters of excellence at the University of Bonn have been receiving funding from the Excellence Strategy since 2019. Bonn was already the university with the most clusters of excellence during this funding period. With its clusters, it also has a particularly broad thematic focus. The spectrum ranges from research into the immune system in ImmunoSensation3 to the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics and ECONtribute at the interface of economics and politics, from quantum information in ML4Q to the agriculture of the future in PhenoRob, and new perspectives on historical and current dependencies in the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. All six projects successfully passed their evaluation and received funding approval in May 2025 for a further seven years of funding.
Two new clusters of excellence
With the two newly approved clusters of excellence, the University of Bonn is expanding its research profile to include two central fields of modern basic research: In the “Color meets Flavor” cluster of excellence, researchers from the University of Bonn, the Technical University of Dortmund, and the University of Siegen are investigating how the building blocks of matter function at their core and where clues to new physics beyond the current Standard Model might be hidden.
The “Our Dynamic Universe” cluster of excellence is supported by the Universities of Cologne and Bonn, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, the Jülich Research Center, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It focuses on the evolution of the universe: from rapid processes in fractions of a second to changes over billions of years, supported by observations, theory, simulations, and data science methods.
University of Excellence: University of Bonn wants to continue its success
In addition to cluster funding, the University of Bonn receives funding as a University of Excellence. The current funding phase expires in 2026; the university has submitted an application for an extension. In March 2026, a decision will be made as to which of the existing Universities of Excellence will continue to receive funding.
Background: What are clusters of excellence?
Clusters of excellence are large, internationally visible research networks in which scientists collaborate across faculties, disciplines, and often across institutional boundaries. The aim is to strengthen particularly high-performing research fields in the long term and enable new scientific breakthroughs. The excellence strategy of the federal and state governments promotes clusters of excellence and, on the basis of these clusters, the designation of entire universities as universities of excellence.
Further information on the Bonn clusters of excellence and cluster funding canbe found here.