Press releases

Prof. Dr. Julia Kehr from the Department of Biology at Universität Hamburg successfully acquired an ERC Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) this year. In the project “Plant Mobile RNAs: Function, Transport and Features” (PLAMORF) Prof. Kehr will spend six years together with Dr...

When we put water in a freezer, water molecules crystallize and form ice. This change from one phase of matter to another is called a phase transition. While this transition, and countless others that occur in nature, typically takes place at the same fixed conditions, such as the freezing point...

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat, WR), and the Joint Science Conference in Bonn have just announced that Universität Hamburg has been granted 4 clusters of excellence. An outstanding success for the...

Dr. Christof Weitenberg, scientist at the Institute of Laser Physics, Hamburg, has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant worth around 1.5 million euros by the European Research Council. In a new research project entitled “Engineering and Exploring Anyonic Quantum Gases,” ANYON for short, he plans to...

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) has granted funding for a new Center for Advanced Study at Universität Hamburg entitled The Futures of Sustainability: Modernization, Transformation, Control. Researchers want to understand how modern societies change when they...

Two separate research fields have been united in Hamburg for the very first time. Ultrashort laser pulses enable us to observe and manipulate matter on very short time scales, whereas ultracold atoms permit experiments with high precision and controllability. In the cluster of excellence “The...

Although more than 16 percent of all national waters are now protected, many ecoregions and countries are not included. The current reserve system is just as expensive as it is inefficient, as Dr. Kerstin Jantke and her team show in a study recently released by Universität Hamburg’s Center for Earth...

Thanks to a novel method, the quality of seasonal forecasts for the winter in many parts of Europe can now be significantly improved. To date, reliable forecasts could mostly be made for the Tropics. A team led by Dr. Mikhail Dobrynin and Prof. Johanna Baehr from Universität Hamburg’s Center for...

For the third consecutive year the ERC has granted Prof. Roland Wiesendanger, head of the Scanning Probe Methods Group in the Department of Physics at Universität Hamburg, a €2.5 million ERC Advanced Grant.

The research group led by biologist Prof. Arp Schnittger from Universität Hamburg has received the 2018 HFSP Research Grant together with international partners from France, Chile, and the USA. The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) is an international research funding agency in the life sciences...

Gravitational force, life force, work force, buying force, creative force, the force of art—our concepts of force are not restricted to the natural sciences, but are also central to a number of cultural spheres, not least aesthetics. The new DFG-funded Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities and...

In a seven-year laboratory study, Dr. Christian Knoblauch from Universität Hamburg’s Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) and an international team have shown, for the first time, that significantly more methane is produced by thawing permafrost than previously thought. The...

We only recycle a small amount of plastics such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate), used to make bottles and packaging. Most ends up in the environment, where it takes a very long time to decompose. According to the German Environment Agency (UBA), it takes up to 450 years for a plastic bottle to...

Extreme gusts of wind of more than 40 km per hour are common on Hamburg’s footpaths. Measurements undertaken by Professor Felix Ament and Dr. Sarah Wiesner from the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) at Universität Hamburg demonstrate this. Their current measuring campaign has...

Third Anneliese Maier Research Award for Universität Hamburg: the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has awarded an Anneliese Maier Research Award worth 250,000 euros to Prof. Dr. Ingrid Piller. The sociolinguist researches at Australia’s Macquarie University in the field of intercultural...