The University of Bonn will start the academic year 2021/22 with a ceremony in the auditorium of its main building on Monday, October 18, at 5 p.m. All university members - especially students - as well as media representatives and all interested parties are cordially invited! The ceremony will be livestreamed on the internet.

Prof. Dr. Joachim von Braun from the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of the University of Bonn, has chaired the scientific group for the UN Food Systems Summit, which recently took place online. Some 40,000 participated at times. As Chair of the Scientific Group, Prof. von Braun chaired a committee of twenty-five internationally recognized experts who prepared the technical aspects of the Summit.

The University of Bonn has opened a "Green Office" as a central contact point for sustainability and to promote the exchange between students, teachers and other employees.

The University of Bonn continues to succeed in the competition for research funding. This is confirmed by the "Funding Atlas 2021" of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), which has just been published. It provides a detailed and clear documentation of the funding flows of public funding institutions to universities and research institutions in the period 2017-2019. In a Germany-wide comparison of DFG funding amounts, Bonn improves to 15th place.

Combining artificially created building blocks with natural ones - that is the goal of two new assistant professors at the University of Bonn. Biophysicist Dr. Alena Khmelinskaia and biophysical chemist Dr. Patrycja Kielb work at the interfaces of different disciplines and hold so-called Argelander professorships, two new posts created at the university with funds from the Excellence program. Such junior professorships are cornerstones within the concept of the six Transdisciplinary Research Areas (TRAs), in which researchers work jointly on future-relevant issues across the boundaries of disciplines and faculties. Alena Khmelinskaia and Patrycja Kielb are now building a bridge between chemistry, physics, and life sciences in the TRA "Building Blocks of Matter and Fundamental Interactions". Their work is relevant for the development of sustainable technologies in modern societies, for example, in medicine or energy research.

The University of St Andrews, with which the University of Bonn has a strategic partnership since 2018, tops the current ranking of the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021 of the best British universities. The Rector of the University of Bonn sends congratulations.