Research and Study at the University of Excellence in Bonn

Following a two-year enforced hiatus due to COVID-19, the Universitätsgesellschaft Bonn’s traditional winter soirée returned this year. Held in the main auditorium in the University Main Building, it included a ceremony at which the UGB prizes were presented in recognition of exceptional doctoral theses and student engagement.

For several years now, the CRISPR/Cas9 gene scissors have been causing a sensation in science and medicine. This new tool of molecular biology has its origins in an ancient bacterial immune system. It protects bacteria from attack by so-called phages, i. e. viruses that infect bacteria. Researchers from the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), in cooperation with the partner University of St Andrews in Scotland and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Hamburg, have now discovered a new function of the gene scissors. The study was published in the scientific journal "Nature".

Success for a research alliance of the University of Bonn, the Technical University of Dresden and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU): The Collaborative Research Center (SFB)/Transregio 237 "Nucleic Acid Immunity" has convinced with its research work of the past four years. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding it for another period with around ten million euros. As planned, the function of spokesperson will be transferred from Prof. Dr. Gunther Hartmann of the University of Bonn to Prof. Dr. Veit Hornung of the LMU.

Artificial intelligence is on everyone's lips. But what does AI do to us and our society? How does it change our view of humanity? How can AI applications be steered in an ethically desirable direction? In the project "Desirable Digitalization" of the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, which is funded by Stiftung Mercator, researchers take a look at the challenges of AI for society as a whole. Participants discussed these topics at the kickoff in Bonn.