The new issue of the University of Bonn’s research magazine forsch is now available. In forsch 2025/01, the focus lies on the interplay between science, ethics, and global collaboration. The magazine showcases how researchers are addressing pressing societal challenges – and how science can actively contribute to public discourse.  

Bharat Desai, Professor of International Law at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, has been honored with a Humboldt Research Award. He was nominated for the €60,000 prize by Professor Stefan Talmon, an international law expert at the University of Bonn, and will now spend a year working in Bonn alongside his host.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved another 4.5 years of funding for the Research Training Group “Template-Designed Organic Electronics” (GRK 2591 – TIDE), bringing the funding total up to 7.3 million euros. The second phase of funding runs from October 2025 until April 2030. The Research Training Group on organic electronics has received funding from the Universities of Cologne and Bonn since 2021. The group provides comprehensive training to enable doctoral students to meet market demand for highly qualified, multi-disciplinary specialists in the field of organic electronics. Its speakers are Professor Klaus Meerholz in Cologne and Professor Arne Lützen in Bonn.

Each spring, Poppelsdorf Campus is transformed into a hot spot for sustainability. The public was invited to find out more about what the University of Bonn is doing in the areas of research, teaching and operations on Sustainability Day, held May 21, 2025. Numerous staff and students were involved in making the day a success, manning the 25 or so stands.

Over 400,000 beetle species have been described to date, making them the largest order of any liv-ing thing. Each individual one triggers spontaneous emotions in us: some people will let out a loud, shrill scream if they see a black beetle, while most will find ladybirds especially charming. When you have someone taking as close a look as photographer Carolin Bleese has done and a researcher as besotted with beetles as is Professor Dr. Nicholas Gompel from the Institute of Organismic Biology at the University of Bonn, then you get some completely new angles on the humble beetle. Running until August 31, 2025, the new special exhibition in P26 entitled “Fascinating Beetles” will display the images that have resulted from the collaboration between the two.

The theme of the Diversity Days, held May 26–27, 2025 at the University of Bonn, was “Family Matters: Balance and Belonging.” Numerous items on the event program concerned achieving balance between caregiving responsibilities and one’s research work. The event focused on broadening society’s view of the traditional nuclear family to include alternative and queer family models and communities of care.

The German Research Foundation approved a new Collaborative Research Center (CRCs) at the University of Bonn. 19 principal investigators and their working groups will study the mathematical structures underlying complex phenomena in areas of criticality. The spokesperson of the CRC is Leibniz Prize winner Professor Angkana Rüland of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics—Cluster of Excellence. The Collaborative Research Center will receive nearly four years of DFG funding of approximately seven million euros.

The winners of the 2024 Gender Studies Prize and Maria von Linden Gender Equality Prize were honored at a ceremony last Friday. With these accolades, the University of Bonn Gender Equality Office recognizes superlative final and doctoral theses on gender studies and outstanding commitment to gender equality.