The 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Germany was celebrated in 2023. The signing of the German-Korean treaty of friendship on November 26, 1883 marked the start of a close political, cultural and academic partnership, and the University of Bonn also enjoys extremely strong links with universities and other academic and scientific institutions in South Korea in many areas and disciplines. For instance, the Korean Studies team at the University of Excellence has covered various topics relating to the country’s past and present in its research and teaching for many decades now.
Vera Weber of the University of Bonn Institute of Numerical Simulation has become the recipient of the Ada Lovelace Award, presented to female mathematicians working in the field of Numerics, for her excellent master's thesis. The Award comes with a purse of 1,000 euros. This is the second time the mathematician has earned the Award, having already been recognized for her bachelor's thesis of distinction in 2019.
The Department of Mathematics (Fachgruppe Mathematik) honors Thorsten Michael Beckmann for the best dissertation of the academic year 2022/2023 in mathematics with the Hausdorff Memorial Prize. The honor was presented by the chair of the Department, Herbert Koch, before the Hausdorff Colloquium in the Lipschitz Hall.
The University of Bonn has some excellent news to report, with two new cluster initiatives given the green light to apply for funding as part of the Excellence Initiative of the German government and federal states. The German Research Foundation and the German Council of Science and Humanities made the announcement earlier today. The two new cluster initiatives are thus among the 41 chosen from the 143 draft proposals in all from across the country that were evaluated. In 2019, the University of Bonn secured an already impressive six clusters, more than any other university in Germany. All of these clusters are applying to maintain their status, putting the University in with a chance of hosting eight Clusters of Excellence.
Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results. Whether they are good or bad news for the fight against global heating remains to be seen. The study is being published in the journal “Nature Climate Change.”
Zebrafish are smaller than your little finger, with a brain no more than half the size of a pinhead. Yet these animals possess an efficient navigation system that enables them to find their way back to spots in the water where the temperature suits them. This has been revealed in a recent study by the University of Bonn and University Hospital Bonn together with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), whose findings have been published in the journal “Current Biology.”
Prof. Dr. Alexander Blanke from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at the University of Bonn has been awarded a Proof of Concept Grant (PoC) by the European Research Council (ERC). This program provides financial support of 150,000 euros over a maximum period of 18 months to help researchers transfer their ideas from previous ERC projects involving outstanding basic research to commercial applications. These grants thus specifically promote the transfer of knowledge and scientific spin-offs or “sciencepreneurship.”
Angioedema is a rare but potentially life-threatening adverse reaction to ACE inhibitors. In a joint analysis of eight European study collectives, researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) for the first time conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with more than 1,000 affected individuals. They identified a total of three risk loci in the genome. These included a new locus that had not previously been associated with the risk of ACE inhibitor-induced angioedema. The results of the study have now been published in the "Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology".