Irritable bowel syndrome, chronic itching, asthma and migraine are in many cases hard-to-treat conditions. They have in common that they are triggered by an excessive immune response—which in severe cases can be life-threatening. A team of researchers led by the University of Bonn has now identified a promising bioactive compound that could effectively reduce symptoms and slash fatality risk. The compound blocks a receptor on certain defense cells, thus preventing a derailed immune response. The study findings have been published in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

South Africa is slowly lifting out of the water – by up to two millimeters per year depending on the region. It had been assumed up to now that this phenomenon was due to mantle flow in the Earth’s crust. However, a study carried out by the University of Bonn now provides another explanation: Droughts and the associated water loss are the main reason for this land uplift. The results have now been published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.”

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has accepted the mathematician Dr. Asgar Jamneshan from the University of Bonn into the Heisenberg program. The program offers researchers five years of funding so that they can carry out high-quality research within their projects and continue to enhance their academic reputation. Jamneshan is carrying out research into the foundations of higher-order Fourier analysis. The mathematician, who is an associate member of the “Hausdorff Center for Mathematics” Cluster of Excellence, will receive funding of up to 570,000 Euro.

The Transdisciplinary Research Areas (TRAs) Modelling and Life and Health at the University of Bonn have presented their €100,000 research prize, entitled “Modelling for Life and Health,” for the second time. The winners—Argelander Professor Ana Ivonne Vazquez-Armendariz and Schlegel Professor Jan Hasenauer—will be using their prize money to study the functions of “scavenger cells” in the lungs at the interface between mathematics and medicine.

Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) type 2 is a congenital malformation of the cerebral cortex that is often associated with difficult-to-treat epilepsy. In the affected areas, nerve cells and their layer structures are arranged in an atypical manner, which often makes drug therapy more difficult. A research team from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, in collaboration with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), has now found evidence of profound changes in the dopamine system in FCD type 2. The results have now been published in the medical journal “Brain”.

Professor Ilona Grunwald Kadow was appointed Vice Rector for Research and Career Development on August 1, 2024. In an interview, the neuroscientist talks about her experience of moving to within University management and what priorities she is keen to set during her term of office.

The ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHCb experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were recently awarded the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics. The $3 million dollar prize honors the efforts of physicists who are working closely with colleagues from other countries to uncover new findings from the world of the very tiniest particles. The University of Bonn can boast significant involvement in three out of the four experiments.

Dennis Gaitsgory, director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPIM) and member of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) of the University of Bonn, receives the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, endowed with 3 million US dollars.