The University of Bonn is being included in the “New Master Plan” for construction in higher education presented by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The new procedure is intended to progress building projects faster and on a more binding and more cost-efficient basis. A corresponding agreement was signed in Düsseldorf on Monday, May 4, 2026, by the state’s Ministry of Culture and Science and Ministry of Finance together with its construction and real estate agency (Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW, or BLB NRW) and the Universities of Bonn and Wuppertal.

How do our genes determine our appearance and our susceptibility to disease? This question is central to biomedical research, and today we can sequence thousands of human genomes to identify these genes. However, genes work in complex networks. In a major transdisciplinary collaboration, an international team of geneticists and bioinformaticians set out to create a so-called genetic interaction (GI) map of a human cell. With significant contributions from the Canadian Donnelly Centre, the University of Minnesota, the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada, the University Hospital Bonn, and the University of Bonn, a first draft has now been published in the journal Cell. This draft currently covers about 2.5 percent of all possible gene pairs. 

In a new discussion paper, a team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Princeton demonstrates that executives in the US are now reaching top positions later than they did two decades ago. This trend towards higher CEO age at appointment is particularly pronounced outside the largest listed firms. The researchers attribute this development to the fact that firms increasingly demand broad knowledge and diverse skills from their CEOs.

In sub-Saharan Africa, many people are undernourished or malnourished. A new study by the Universities of Bonn and Ghana shows how rising incomes and urbanization are influencing dietary patterns of local populations. According to this, the wealthier segments in African countries are increasingly eating like people in Western industrialized countries. Although this improves their supply of important nutrients, it also has a greater negative impact on the environment. The study also looks at how this environmental damage can be minimized. It has been published in the journal ‘Sustainable Production and Consumption.’

In the search for new drugs, artificial intelligence in the form of diffusion models is being used in drug design. What exactly does AI do in this context? Dr. Andrea Mastropietro and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bajorath from Life Science Informatics at the University of Bonn and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have investigated this.

The response has been overwhelming: “Physics for Grandparents and Other Curious Minds” had to be streamed online due to the large number of participants. Ultimately, the series enables listeners to find answers to their grandchildren’s pressing questions. The series of events is currently on hiatus. It will resume in the winter semester—with an added boost. Physicist Prof. Dr. Dieter Meschede can now count on support from the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation—and the audience will benefit as well. 

Myofibrillar myopathy type 6 (MFM6) is a rare genetic muscle disorder that leads to severe muscle weakness and a drastically shortened life expectancy due to a disruption in muscle protein regulation. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn developed a mouse model for the disease and were thus able to show that a disruption in cellular recycling—known technically as autophagy—is the primary trigger for the disease. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

A team of astrophysicists from Nanjing University and University of Bonn have demonstrated that, rather than being random, the mass of new stars born inside a star cluster is actually governed by a defined process of self-regulation. Their work has been published in the journal “Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.”