If humans or animals eat something that causes them to feel unwell, they subsequently avoid this food source. Until now, it has been unclear precisely how this avoidance learning takes place. A new study shows that communication between the brain cells and fat cells could play a crucial role here. The participants from the Universities of Bonn and Tohoku (Japan) and University Hospital Bonn have revealed the previously unknown mechanism in the fruit fly Drosophila. It may also exist in a similar form in mammals and even in humans. The results have now been published in the journal Neuron. 

The University of Bonn will be celebrating 150 years of geodesy in the city on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. With a special ceremony, the University’s Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation will be acknowledging its long tradition in research and teaching while also turning its thoughts to the future. Specifically, it will be asking what contributions geodesy will need to make to society, science and technology over the coming decades.

Research on ancient DNA is surging, but how can it be ensured that human remains of irreplaceable significance are preserved? This is the question investigated by an international research team led by the University of Bonn. Their findings have now been published in the journal “PLOS ONE.”

Since the beginning of February 2026, the University of Bonn has been home to the new North Rhine-Westphalian Coordination Office for Translation Matters in Higher Education (‘Landeskoordinationsstelle für Übersetzungsangelegenheiten im Hochschulwesen des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen’). It is developing an online platform offering sample translations, translation resources and training sessions, while serving as a central contact point for translation-related questions. The platform is scheduled to launch in late April 2026.

The University of Bonn is hosting a new Emmy Noether Group devoted to AI methods. Junior Professor Marc Rußwurm is developing AI methods for fusing different types of geodata to arrive at a uniform geospatial representation. The German Research Foundation (DFG) will be providing up to 1.4 million euros in funding for the research group over the next six years. The Emmy Noether Program is a framework designed to enable selected postdocs and assistant professors on fixed-term contracts to obtain the qualifications necessary to hold a university professorship.

Thirty-four years after scientists at the Cornell University first conceived it, the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) now rises above the Atacama Desert, near the summit of Cerro Chajnantor in Chile’s Parque Astronómico Atacama. FYST will help answer some of the most important questions in astronomy, including how the universe works, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, how galaxies form and evolve and what happened in those mysterious first moments after the Big Bang.

In the age of voice messages and videos, writing is easily forgotten. Yet for millennia, it has been the central medium of our cultural memory: it stores knowledge and tells stories. Simple symbols give rise to entire worlds in the mind—almost like cinema without popcorn. Whether painted or carved in stone, it lasts an astonishingly long time. Without it, we would know little about the past. Even before humans could read, they interpreted signs: they read animal tracks, navigated by the stars, and determined the time of day by the sun’s position. Egyptologist Prof. Ludwig Morenz of the University of Bonn describes the long road to writing in his new book. 

What cognitive frameworks underlie concepts of God in ancient Israel? A new research group at the University of Bonn is investigating this question. It is receiving nearly two million euros in funding from the German Research Foundation. The principal investigator is Prof. Dr. Jan Dietrich from the Faculty of Protestant Theology. Scientists from Bonn are also involved in two other new research groups examining how Chinese technology companies create new dependencies (political science) and how the Earth’s rotation can be measured even more precisely (geodesy).