Ideas for research and teaching: Our nucleus professorships
Appointing outstanding researchers is a vital building block in our strategy as a University of Excellence and our nucleus professorships play a central role in contributing new ideas to the areas of research in question.
Whether health economics, the global history of law, or digital innovation: we now have 6 professorships strengthening profile-building research areas at the University of Excellence in their own unique ways. Moreover, the foundations for new cooperation and the development of future clusters of excellence have a ripple effect in support for early career research support and teaching.
Find out more about our nucleus professors:
- Faculty of Humanities
- Denomination: Modern and Contemporary History
- Nucleus professorship in the research area Inflammation, Infection and Immunity
- Interview with the nucleus professor Ulf Schmidt
- Faculty of Law
- Denomination: Global Legal History, Civil Law, and Computational Legal Theory
- Nucleus professorship in the profile area Law in Global Contexts
- Faculty of Medicine
- Denomination: Systems Neuroscience
- Nucleus professorship in the profile area Neurosciences and Cognitive Systems
- Interview with nucleus professor Stefano Panzeri
- Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences
- Denomination: Economics with a Focus on Empirical Health Economics
- Nucleus professorship in the profile Area Health Economics
- Interview with nucleus professor Iris Kesternich
Prof. Dr. Laura Marie Edinger-Schons
- Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences
- Denomination: Business Administration with a Focus on Sustainable Business
- Nucleus Professor and Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO)
- Interview with nucleus professor Laura Marie Edinger-Schons
- University of Hamburg Business School
- Denomination: Information Systems and Digital Innovation
- Interview with nucleus professor Jan Recker
News about the Excellence Strategy
Photo: MPSD
17 November 2025|Excellence StrategyThe German Physical Society Honors University of Hamburg Physicist
The German Physical Society has awarded Prof. Dr. Andrea Cavalleri the Stern-Gerlach Medal for outstanding work in experimental physics. Cavalleri is the leading researcher in the Cluster of Excellence CUI: Advanced Images of Matter at the University of Hamburg.
Photo: Rafa Neddermeyer/Cop30
10 November 2025|Excellence Strategy“Belém is a signal.”
In the Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS), Brazilian-born sociology professor Eduardo Gonçalves Gresse is researching how international climate conferences work. He is taking part as an observer in this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in his native country, and says he is cautiously...
Photo: Private
6 November 2025|Excellence StrategyUltrafast meets ultrashort: CUI team receives prestigious ERC Synergy Grant
A research team in the Cluster of Excellence CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter at the University of Hamburg and DESY has been awarded the prestigious Synergy Grant from the European Research Council. It will receive €14 million to combine atomic-scale imaging with attosecond science, the most advanced approach to ultrafast...
Photo: ESO/B. Tafreshi
21 October 2025|Excellence StrategyThe Sky in All Its Colors
A few days ago, the European Southern Observatory launched operation of a new type of instrument, the 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), which will carry out unique sky surveys over the next five years. The University of Hamburg is involved in this milestone of the international 4MOST consortium with its...
Photo: Charles Steitler
7 October 2025|Excellence StrategyX-Ray Insight into Ancient Letters
The cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia are considered the world’s oldest written artifacts. Many of them are hidden in clay envelopes, their contents still a mystery. The world’s first mobile CT scanner for cultural goods is now enabling the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (UWA) to read the texts for the...
Photo: UHH/Kornowski
2 October 2025|Excellence StrategyThoughts on the “Marvelous Magnifying Glass”
With its 5 electron microscopes, the University of Hamburg is a major location for these large pieces of equipment. The chemist Dr. Charlotte Ruhmlieb explains how to make them as useful to as many researchers as possible and why research today is inconceivable without these microscopes.
