The German Research Foundation (DFG) is to provide €1.25 million in funding for a Reinhart Koselleck Project based at the University Hospital Bonn and the ImmunoSensation² Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn. The research team led by Professor Christoph Wilhelm, Professor for Immunopathology at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, plans to study how the body maintains its delicate balance with the intestinal flora during times of illness and hunger.

The University of Bonn is once again featured on the international “Highly Cited Researchers” list: According to Clarivate Analytics, the information service provider that compiles the list, a total of ten researchers are among the top one percent of the most influential in their field worldwide.

Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease (MOGAD) is a rare autoimmune condition in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the protective myelin sheath of nerve fibers in the central nervous system. Although MOGAD induces symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis (MS), its underlying biology appears to be fundamentally different. Understanding these distinctions is crucial for developing effective, disease-specific treatments. A new international study under contribution of ImmunoSensation2 member Prof. Anne-Katrin Pröbstel and her team now sheds light on these immune differences. The results have been published in Science Translational Medicine. 

Researchers from the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University Hospital Cologne have decoded the immunological properties of what is known as extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) in the blood of patients suffering from the condition. Their findings, which have now been published in the journal “Nature Communications,” could help to develop new treatments and methods for diagnosing the illness.

Slow, inefficient, boring: this is how most people would describe bureaucracy. While the majority try to avoid bureaucracy, Dr Alexandra Irimia deliberately focuses on it in her research. For her project at the Department of German and Comparative Literature and Culture (IGLK), hosted by Prof. Kerstin Stüssel, she is examining how bureaucracy is portrayed in literature.

Will it be possible in future to prepare proofs developed in cutting-edge mathematical research with a reasonable amount of human effort so that they can be verified by computers in real time? Prof. Dr. Christoph Thiele and Prof. Dr. Floris van Doorn from the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM), a Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn, want to help make this possible. The two researchers submitted a joint application for a coveted Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Following the award of the grant, the European Union will now provide total funding of 6.4 million euros to the “Harmonic Analysis with Lean Formalization” (HALF) project over the next six years. Lean is a relatively new programming language that is increasingly establishing itself as the standard for mathematical formalization.

Extreme weather events such as heavy rain and flooding pose growing challenges for early warning systems worldwide. Researchers at the University Bonn, the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have developed RiverMamba, a new AI model that can predict river discharges and flood risks more accurately than previous methods. The research paper has been accepted for NeurIPS 2025 – a sign of scientific excellence in Bonn-based research. RiverMamba thus makes an important contribution to climate adaptation and risk prevention – topics that are receiving special attention worldwide, particularly around UN World Tsunami Awareness Day on November 5th.

IBM and the Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics at the University of Bonn have maintained a close and productive collaboration since 1987. This cooperation was originally initiated by the institute’s long-time director, Bernhard Korte, who sadly passed away in April of this year. The partners have now expanded and intensified their cooperation.