Living and working with robots changes people. How can artificial intelligence (AI) be innovative and respect social values at the same time? In the future, one of the world's leading experts in the field of robot ethics will be conducting research on these questions at the University of Bonn. Prof. Aimee van Wynsberghe has been selected by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a Humboldt Professorship and will receive EUR 3.5 million—the highest endowed research prize in Germany intended to attract renowned scientists from abroad to carry out long-term research at German universities. Aimee van Wynsberghe comes from the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands) and plans to begin her work at the University of Bonn on February 1, 2021.

After the preliminary publication on the preprint server medRxiv in May 2020, the study by scientists of the University of Bonn about the first coronavirus outbreak in Germany in the community of Gangelt has been published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications.

The Universities of Bonn (Germany) and St Andrews (Scotland) are hosting a digital panel discussion with high-profile guests on the role of science in the corona pandemic, set for Tuesday, November 17, 2:00 to 3:30 pm (MEZ). The public event is organized by Scotland House in Brussels.

2019 was a special year for the University of Bonn, as it became a university of excellence. The Rectorate's annual report, which has now been published, gives an overview of the "road to excellence" and what else has happened.

The University of Bonn Faculty of Medicine has awarded an honorary doctorate to renowned Australia-based immunologist Prof. Dr. Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Miller. The award ceremony was conducted online due to the corona pandemic, held as part of the Digital Cluster Science Days 2020 organized by the ImmunoSensation Cluster of Excellence2.

The Director of the International Office of the University of Bonn, Dr. Kai Sicks, will be the new Secretary General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). He will take over his new office in spring 2021 from Dr. Dorothea Rüland.

A genetic disposition that plays a role in the development of the heart in the embryo also appears to play a key role in the human immune system. This is shown by a recent study led by the University of Bonn. When the gene is not active enough, the immune defense system undergoes characteristic changes, causing it to lose its effectiveness. Doctors speak of an aging immune system, as a similar effect can often be observed in older people. In the medium term, the results may contribute to reduce these age-related losses. The study is published in the journal Nature Immunology.

Long neck, small head and a live weight of several tons - with this description you could have tracked down the Plateosaurus in Central Europe about 220 million years ago. Paleontologists at the University of Bonn have now described for the first time an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile Plateosaurus and discovered that it looked very similar to its parents even at a young age. The fact that Plateosaurus showed a largely fully developed morphology at an early age could have important implications for how the young animals lived and moved around. The young Plateosaurus, nicknamed "Fabian", was discovered in 2015 at the Frick fossil site in Switzerland and is exhibited in the local dinosaur museum. The study was published in the journal "Acta Palaeontologica Polonica".