The Council of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has decided today that Bonn will be a new location for the European authority from 2021. This is a forward-looking decision for the University of Bonn and its partners in the region.

Together with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, researchers from the University of Bonn have deciphered the oldest place name sign in the world. An inscription from the time of the emergence of the Egyptian state in the late fourth millennium B.C. from the Wadi el Malik east of Aswan, which is still barely explored archaeologically, bears four hieroglyphs: "Domain of the Horus King Scorpion".

How do laser beams get the right shape? A question that occupies not just some fantasy heroes, but also physicists at the University of Bonn. In the course of their research, three of them have found a solution to the problem that is so practical that it has aroused the interest not only of the scientific community, but now also of industry experts: The start-up project "Midel Photonics" by Dr. David Dung, Dr. Christian Wahl and Frederik Wolf is one of twelve start-ups selected this year for the state-wide "HIGH-TECH.NRW" program.

The University of Bonn and the Japanese National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) have signed a cooperation agreement. It defines the terms of cooperation between the two institutions in research and comes into force on December 1, 2020.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) have the potential to convert into a wide variety of cell types and tissues for drug testing and cell replacement therapies. However, the "recipes" for this conversion are often complicated and difficult to implement. Researchers at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) at TU Dresden, Harvard University (USA) and the University of Bonn have found a way to systematically extract hundreds of different cells quickly and easily from iPS using transcription factors, including neurons, connective tissue and blood vessel cells. Researchers can use this transcription factor source through the non-profit organization Addgene. The results have now been published in the journal "Nature Biotechnology".

Over the last 40,000 years, ice sheets thousands of miles apart have been influencing each other through changes in sea level. An international team of researchers with the participation of the University of Bonn compared models of ice sheet changes during the latest ice age cycle with newly available geological records. The study, led by Natalya Gomez of McGill University in Montreal (Canada), shows for the first time that changes in the Antarctic ice sheet in the south during this period were influenced by melting ice sheets in the northern hemisphere. The results have now been published in the journal Nature.

Research across subject boundaries: Researchers from the University of Bonn have been awarded a prize by the University's Transdisciplinary Research Area "Life and Health" for three special projects in the life sciences. The steering committee of the research area rewards the three project teams with 50,000 euros each for their creative and innovative approaches. Up to three researchers work together on one project. They come from the disciplines of biology, pharmacy, medicine and mathematics.

With a total of 14 researchers, the University of Bonn is represented this year in the international ranking of "Highly Cited Researchers".