Telling the right story is an art that Sören Böckmann, Dr. Tobit Esch, and Nacira Richi are teaching artificial intelligence. With their start-up project “Narraflix,” they are developing an AI-based platform for digital storytelling that uses stories to give customers vivid insights into a company or product. This is intended to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular to make their brand more visible in the digital world. The Narraflix project from the University of Bonn is now receiving a Start-up Transfer.NRW grant of almost €260,000 from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union.

The University of Bonn has further advanced in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking 2025, now ranking 89th worldwide—up two slots since last year. In Germany it improved as well, climbing one slot to fifth place, in the company of the country’s other leading institutions like Technical University of Munich, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Heidelberg and Humboldt University of Berlin.

We often only realize how important our sense of smell is when it is no longer there: food hardly tastes good, or we no longer react to dangers such as the smell of smoke. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the University of Aachen have investigated the neuronal mechanisms of human odor perception for the first time. Individual nerve cells in the brain recognize odors and react specifically to the smell, the image and the written word of an object, for example a banana. The results of this study close a long-standing knowledge gap between animal and human odor research and have now been published in the renowned journal "Nature".

“It's really difficult and depressing to keep reading and researching about how people and ecosystems are suffering from climate change,” says Prof. Dr. Lisa Schipper from the Department of Geographical Development Research at the University of Bonn. As a scientist, she was involved in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Now, in a commentary in the renowned journal “Nature Climate Change”, she argues that science also needs discussions about emotions. We asked Lisa Schipper about this. 

International Days 2024 is all about excellent early-career researchers, international partnerships and dialogue on how to meet global challenges. In addition to the traditional ceremony for the state awards and the DAAD Prize, the Vice Rectorate for International Affairs invites the public to attend a host of info events, talks and workshops. One major highlight will be a keynote lecture by Harvard Professor Homi K. Bhabha, who is an internationally recognized cultural theory scholar.

Researchers at the University of Bonn and University of Montreal have developed a new type of catalyst and used it in their study to produce methane out of carbon dioxide and water in a highly efficient way using electricity. Methane can be used, for example, to heat apartments or as a starting material in the chemical industry. It is also the main component of natural gas. If it is produced using green electricity, however, it is largely climate neutral. The insights gained from the model system studied by the researchers can be transferred to large-scale technical catalysts. The system could also be used to produce other important chemical compounds. The study was recently published in the prestigious journal “Nature Chemistry.” 

Until March 2025, the opening exhibition in the Knowledge Lab Uni Bonn (KLUB), housed in the P26 building, will provide insights into the stories behind some of the objects in the University of Bonn’s museums and collections. Researchers have set out to discover the origin and acquisition history of various objects, known as their “provenance.” To this end, they are posing various questions: who collected or purchased the objects, when and how? How and why did they end up at the University of Bonn? In addition, the exhibition explores the question of how museums can handle objects from sensitive contexts in an appropriate way.

Rector Professor Michael Hoch has now been given the “Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays” of Japan’s Imperial House in recognition of his contribution to academic exchange and Japanese-German understanding. The order, which is one of the highest awarded in Japan for services to civil society, was presented by the country’s Consul-General Setsuko Kawahara on behalf of the Tennō and the Prime Minister of Japan at a ceremony held at her official residence in Düsseldorf.