Events & Opportunities

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News

University of Bonn Lands Two ERC Starting Grants

Bonn has again prevailed in competition for funding from the European Research Council (ERC), with researchers of the University of Excellence landing two prestigious ERC Starting Grants. Neuroscientist Professor Lukas Kunz, also associated with University Hospital Bonn (UKB), conducts research on how the human brain constructs the first-person perspective of our experiences. Dr. Riccardo Pennetta is leading a research project on large-scale quantum physics. The two researchers are to each receive approximately 1.5 million euros from the ERC for their projects over a five-years period.

Diets need more sustainability

There has been a rapid increase in cardiovascular and metabolic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa. What is the link between sustainable diets that are nutritious, environmentally friendly, economically affordable, and socioculturally acceptable, and cardiometabolic conditions? An international research team led by Prof. Dr. Ina Danquah, Hertz Chair for Innovation for Planetary Health in the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Sustainable Futures” and Director at Center for Development Research (ZEF) at University of Bonn, investigated this question among Ghanaian adults who live in various locations.

Light gases exhibit critical behavior

RESEARCH TICKER UNIVERSITY OF BONN: A team of researchers from the University of Bonn, Heidelberg University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico has studied the critical behavior of light particles (photons) close to a phase transition.

Droughts and Floods Attract Little Media Attention

Three factors—spectacular images, a high death toll and strong personal ties—make it more likely that the media in one country will report on a natural disaster in another, according to a study by the University of Bonn, the University of Warwick and Imperial College London, which has now been published in the journal “Nature Human Behaviour.” The data also shows that droughts and flooding—two of the biggest effects of climate change—are considered particularly un-newsworthy, which could be one explanation for why many people are still underestimating the impact of the greenhouse effect.

Chemical Fingerprints Reveal Hidden Histories of Massive Stars

Many massive stars were once part of binary systems, but their exciting past is often lost – at least it was so far. A new study at the University of Bonn and at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics has now found a new method to identify stars that once gained mass from a companion – stars that now appear as single objects but carry the chemical scars of their binary youth. Using a unique “chemical fingerprint” – independent of specific evolutionary models – they were able to reconstruct the binary histories of massive stars. The method has already reclassified the well-studied star γ Columbae as a former mass gainer – challenging long-held assumptions about its origin– and offered new insight into Supernova SN 1987A’s progenitor. The findings have now been published in “Nature Astronomy.”

Good news, false expectations? How people assess potential returns in the stock market

A study involving the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne demonstrates that not only retail investors but also financial professionals often assess the potential returns on the stock market differently to what standard models of financial economics predict. This is due to differing ideas about how news on companies affects future stock returns. The study, entitled “Mental Models of the Stock Market,” has been published in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Hunting for the Axion with a Huge Magnet

The search for an as-yet undiscovered elementary particle has been given fresh momentum as the German Research Foundation (DFG) has now greenlit the construction of a special €6 million magnet system in the Color meets Flavor Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn, University of Siegen and TU Dortmund University. Dubbed “BabyIAXO,” it is being built to hunt for the axion, a hitherto undetected elementary particle that could unlock one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in particle physics.