Events & Opportunities

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News

Will mathematical research results be verified by computers in the future?

Will it be possible in future to prepare proofs developed in cutting-edge mathematical research with a reasonable amount of human effort so that they can be verified by computers in real time? Prof. Dr. Christoph Thiele and Prof. Dr. Floris van Doorn from the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM), a Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn, want to help make this possible. The two researchers submitted a joint application for a coveted Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Following the award of the grant, the European Union will now provide total funding of 6.4 million euros to the “Harmonic Analysis with Lean Formalization” (HALF) project over the next six years. Lean is a relatively new programming language that is increasingly establishing itself as the standard for mathematical formalization.

RiverMamba: New AI architecture improves flood forecasting

Extreme weather events such as heavy rain and flooding pose growing challenges for early warning systems worldwide. Researchers at the University Bonn, the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have developed RiverMamba, a new AI model that can predict river discharges and flood risks more accurately than previous methods. The research paper has been accepted for NeurIPS 2025 – a sign of scientific excellence in Bonn-based research. RiverMamba thus makes an important contribution to climate adaptation and risk prevention – topics that are receiving special attention worldwide, particularly around UN World Tsunami Awareness Day on November 5th.

Ominous false alarm in the kidney

Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have discovered how a small, naturally occurring RNA molecule in the kidney activates a mutated immune receptor, triggering a chain reaction. In cooperation with Nanyang Technological University Singapore and the University Hospital Würzburg, among others, the study provides an explanation for how a point mutation in the immune receptor RIG-I transforms the body's defense system into a self-destructive force and causes severe organ-specific autoimmune diseases. The results have now been published in the journal Science Immunology.

Discrete mathematics creates impact

IBM and the Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics at the University of Bonn have maintained a close and productive collaboration since 1987. This cooperation was originally initiated by the institute’s long-time director, Bernhard Korte, who sadly passed away in April of this year. The partners have now expanded and intensified their cooperation.

University of Bonn Researchers Investigate Genetic Discoloration in Gourds

Why are pumpkins orange, melons yellow and cucumbers green—but never pink or blue? A team of researchers at the University of Bonn has set out to unravel this botanical mystery. Their preprint reveals that, over the course of evolution, the entire gourd family (Cucurbitaceae, or cucurbits) has lost the genes responsible for blue and pink pigments. What is more, this loss is permanent—an extremely rare phenomenon among plant families.

New method developed for the precise production of human neural circuits in the laboratory

How do the circuits of the human brain work – and what happens when they are disrupted? To investigate these questions, researchers at the Eye Clinic of the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, together with colleagues from the University of Münster and Harvard Medical School, have developed an innovative platform that allows the function of neural networks to be studied in a targeted manner. The results have now been published in the journal ACS Nano.

“Start-up Transfer.NRW” Funding for Smart AI Assistant

Led by economist Dr. Jan Bergerhoff and computer scientist Adolfo Santamónica, the Heinzel AI project at the University of Bonn is developing an AI-powered “little helper” (“Heinzelmännchen” in German) for businesses. The smart AI assistance that it provides is designed to help firms familiarize a talking AI with their company-specific data, thus enabling it to make applications, invoices and forms much easier to process, for example. The Heinzel AI project has been awarded nearly €300,000 in “Start-up Transfer.NRW” funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the European Union.