NRW Academy Welcomes Three New Members from the University of Bonn
The North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts welcomed eleven new members at its annual ceremony, including three from the University of Bonn: Professor Hendrik Hakenes, a financial market economist; Professor Claudia Wich-Reif, a German scholar; and Professor Anna-Katharina Hornidge, a sociologist. The four women and seven men who make up the academy are united by exceptional research work and creative excellence in their area of expertise.
Pursuing Criminals Across EU Borders
In May 2026, the University of Bonn will begin coordinating a two-year EU project together with partners from Amsterdam, Lublin and Paris on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and humane detention conditions in specific EU countries. The European Commission is providing some €350,000 in funding for the project, €150,000 of which is destined for Bonn.
Debunking Immune-System Myths Over Dinner, at the “Immunesystem Gerüchteküche”
People who want to do something for their health these days often turn to Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms for information. But what’s really behind the posts and trends shared by health influencers? On May 13, the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation3 at the University of Bonn invited the public to join five professors for dinner to explore this question. In a relaxed atmosphere, social media posts on health and the immune system were presented, discussed by the approximately 40 participants, and analyzed together with the experts. The launch of this new format took place at John Barleycorn as part of Bonn’s “May of Science.”
Smart Monitoring for People with Epilepsy
The PearNet project is developing special wearables—body-worn electronic devices—that give epilepsy patients advance warning of seizures and monitor and record them when they happen. The brainchild of researchers from the University Hospital Bonn and University of Bonn, it has now secured some €2.7 million in funding over three years via the GO-Bio next program run by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The money will go toward making further preparations for spinning off the project so that its set of wearables can be launched on the biotechnology market.
University of Bonn Boosted by New Research Alliances
The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) has announced that a new Collaborative Research Center (CRC) is to be set up at the University of Bonn: the “FoodDiverse” collaborative project, which is studying the diversification of food systems. The University will also be involved in a new CRC/Transregio (CRC-TRR) looking at narratives from pre-modern times and various cultural contexts, while two existing CRC-TRRs have been extended for another funding period. TRRs are projects that are implemented by several universities working together.
Depression dampens anticipation, not enjoyment
The loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities, which is experienced in everyday life and can be very distressing, is a core symptom of major depression. However, it has remained unclear exactly how anhedonia, also known as a pleasure deficit, manifests itself. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn, and the University Hospital Tübingen have found that people with depression do not perceive food as less rewarding when they actually consume it. The differences compared to people without depression emerge during anticipation: how much they want something before they receive it. This reduced desire is also linked to the clinical severity of anhedonia. The study’s findings have now been published in the journal “Cell Reports Medicine.”