Research and Study at the University of Excellence in Bonn

Immune cells are capable of detecting infections just like a sniffer dog, using special sensors known as Toll-like receptors, or TLRs for short. But what signals activate TLRs, and what is the relationship between the scale and nature of this activation and the substance being detected? In a recent study, researchers from the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) used an innovative method to answer these questions. The approach that they took might help to speed up the search for drugs to combat infectious diseases, cancer, diabetes or dementia. Their findings have been published in the journal “Nature Communications.”

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku (Azerbaijan) from November 11 to 22, 2024 will also address the sensitive issue of financing adaptation strategies. Prof. Dr. Lisa Schipper from the Department of Geographical Development Research at the University of Bonn and Dr. Aditi Mukherji from CGIAR, warn in the journal Science against misusing the alleged lack of measurability of climate change adaptation strategies to cut funding. Both scientists were involved in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Wolfgang Lück, professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn and member of the Cluster of Excellence Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, has been awarded the Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize by the Otto and Edith Haupt Foundation at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The foundation honors his outstanding contributions to topology. The award ceremony will take place on June 6, 2025. 

Don Zagier, Director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and associated member of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, was elected as a new member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. The Accademia dei Lincei will officially welcome its new members at a ceremony that will take place in Rome on Friday 8 November 2024.