Eight Clusters of Excellence
The University of Bonn is one of Germany's leading research universities and enjoys an excellent reputation worldwide. This can be seen by the funding provided to date under the Excellence Initiative by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat). In 2006, the University of Bonn was awarded two Clusters of Excellence and two Graduate Schools. Since January 2019, the University of Bonn has six Clusters of Excellence, more than any other university in Germany.
This will change with the new funding period. From January 2026, Uni Bonn will have eight Clusters of Excellence. And thus maintains its leading position in Germany.
Our Clusters of Excellence
These six Clusters of Excellence of the University of Bonn are where top-level research is conducted: the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies deals with issues of “asymmetric dependency,” ECONtribute: Markets and Public Policy is grounded in economics and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics is an internationally significant center for mathematical research and teaching. ImmunoSensation2 studies the immune system, ML4Q—Matter and Light for Quantum Computing focuses on quantum information and PhenoRob is Germany’s only Cluster of Excellence that combines the agricultural sciences with engineering.
Since 2019, the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) has offered new perspectives on slavery and dependency research with the key concept of 'Strong Asymmetrical Dependency'. It examines deep-rooted social dependencies from different historical periods and geographical regions – from Roman, transatlantic and Mamluk slavery, as well as forced labour, to debt bondage and human trafficking and serfdom. While considering all shades between 'free' and 'unfree', researchers from 43 disciplines collaborate with 24 international partner institutions in a transdisciplinary manner. “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency” provides an analytical framework for understanding how power relations have historically shaped societies – and continue to do so today. In the face of global challenges such as forced migration, inequality, and environmental destruction, this research provides key insights into the persistence of dependency relationships.
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann, Islamic Studies, Universität Bonn
Institutions involved:
Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt am Main
Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC), Bonn
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn
Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne
Ruhr University Bochum
The Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy addresses pressing societal and technological challenges such as global financial crises, rising inequality, political polarization, digitalization and climate change. Approximately 150 researchers from economics and related disciplines work on innovative approaches to analyze markets and public policy and develop responses to such challenges. At the heart of the research is human thinking and acting, including notions of fairness, beliefs and expectations – crucial factors for better understanding markets and deriving well-founded recommendations for policy and market design. In the second funding phase, the Clusters’ researchers will increasingly focus on the conditions under which policy proposals attract support in society.
Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Dohmen, Applied Micro-Economics, University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Matthias Heinz, Director of the Reinhard Selten Institute, University of Bonn and University of Cologne
Prof. Dr. Pia Pinger, Economics, University of Cologne
Universities involved:
University of Cologne
Institutions involved:
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) was founded in 2006 as the first-ever Cluster of Excellence for mathematics in Germany. It has evolved into an internationally significant center for mathematical research and teaching and for academic dialogue. The HCM produces a host of world-renowned award winners every year. Its research interests range from pure and applied mathematics and questions of economics through to interdisciplinary projects involving colleagues from fields such as materials research and the life sciences.
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Valentin Blomer, Mathematical Institute, University of Bonn
Institutions involved:
Max Planck Institute for Mathematics
ImmunoSensation has done much to advance our understanding of the immune system ever since it was established in 2012. It involves over 80 research groups from the fields of immunology, neuroscience, system biology, bioinformatics, mathematics and clinical research working closely together. Through their joint efforts, they have made a major contribution to the identification and characterization of key innate immune system sensors, decoded new immune activation mechanisms and elevated the concept of immune sensing to international prominence. Essentially, this views the immune system as an immune sensory system—as a “sensory organ,” in other words. The cluster’s aim for the next funding period onward, when it will bear the new name of ImmunoSensation3, is to use these foundations to tackle the next scientific challenge on its agenda. This will be to conduct systematic research into immune diversity, i.e. the structural, functional and dynamic variety present in the immune system.
Speaker:
Prof. Gunther Hartmann, MD, Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital Bonn, University of Bonn
Institutions involved:
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Quantum computers lie at the heart of the ML4Q Cluster of Excellence, which was founded in 2019 by the University of Bonn, the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University together with Forschungszentrum Jülich. The cluster aims to lay the foundations for new computer and network architectures that are based on the principles of quantum mechanics and are more powerful than conventional computers. To this end, it works to analyze and optimize the quantum materials required to create various qubit platforms such as semiconductor qubits, superconducting qubits, topological qubits and Rydberg atoms. The cluster’s researchers are also devising algorithms for fault-tolerant quantum computing and strategies for quantum error correction.
Speaker:
Prof. Yoichi Ando, Solid State Physics, University of Cologne
Speaker in Bonn:
Prof. Dr. Simon Stellmer, Quantum Metrology, University of Bonn
Universities involved:
University of Cologne, RWTH Aachen University
Other institutions involved:
Forschungszentrum Jülich
PhenoRob stands for a sustainable and technology-driven transformation of agriculture – an issue of global importance and high relevance for Germany. The Cluster of Excellence focuses on developing innovative and sustainable cropping systems as well as new technologies, such as robotics, artificial intelligence and sensor-based phenotyping, for the resource-efficient production of crops. Interdisciplinary teams are researching new approaches to reduce the environmental impact, exploit automation potential in the field, and identify forward-looking solutions for agricultural systems in Germany. Embedded within the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional and Engineering Sciences at the University of Bonn, PhenoRob is Germany’s only Cluster of Excellence in the field of Agriculture 4.0. Since the first funding period, it has been internationally visible as a center of excellent research in robotics and phenotyping for sustainable crop production. It has delivered significant contributions toward sustainable agriculture – also through the successful spin-off of start-up companies.
Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Cyrill Stachniss, Photogrammetry and Robotics, University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Heiner Kuhlmann, Geodesy, University of Bonn
Institutions involved:
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Two new Clusters
The German Research Foundation and the German Council of Science and Humanities have selected two further cluster initiatives, “Color meets Flavor” and “Our Dynamic Universe”. They will begin their work in January 2026.
Colour meets Flavor
About the Cluster initiative "Color meets Flavor" (in German with English subtitles)
Bild © Universität Bonn / YouTube
The existence of dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe point to gaps in our understanding of the world around us. Even though virtually all the measurements that we can make in particle physics can already be described in detail by the Standard Model, deciphering the structure of subatomic matter is one of the most pressing questions in fundamental physics. Specifically, researchers are wondering where new phenomena of fundamental physics might be hiding.
Some of the most intriguing measurements in recent years have involved interplay between the strong (“color”) and weak (“flavor”) interaction. It is this interplay that the researchers in the new Cluster of Excellence together with TU Dortmund University, the University of Siegen and Forschungszentrum Jülich now want to investigate in more detail in a close partnership between theory and experimentation. They will focus on the physics of quarks and the question of how these fundamental building blocks of matter form complex bonding states and are also intending to explore the properties of the Higgs boson and continue the hunt for the axion. With the masses of the six known quarks spanning several orders of magnitude, the experimental infrastructure needed to study them ranges from experiments at low-to-medium energy levels at the ELSA particle accelerator in Bonn all the way through to ultra-high-energy experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, which will also offer an opportunity to investigate the Higgs boson.
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Jochen Dingfelder, Elementary Particle Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Bonn;
Speaker for the Research and Technology Center for Detector Physics
Universities involved:
TU Dortmund University, University of Siegen
Institutions involved:
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Our Dynamic Universe
About the Cluster initiative "Our Dynamic Universe"
Bild © Universität Bonn / YouTube
The structure and development of our Universe is shaped by countless phenomena that follow some very different timescales, ranging from fractions of a second to billions of years. This new Cluster of Excellence, in partnership with the University of Cologne, brings the various processes of astrophysics together through a combination of observations using new instruments, theory backed by innovative simulation and data science methods, and laboratory astrophysics. The aim is to come up with a complete description of the evolution of matter and energy flows over time. Within the Bonn/Cologne region, the cluster initiative is based in a internationally acclaimed center of expertise for radio astronomy, underpinned by four main pillars: (1) building state-of-the-art detectors and instruments for international telescopes; (2) leading large-scale observation programs; (3) running a world-class laboratory for astrophysics; and (4) simulating the dynamic evolution of planets, stars and galaxies on high-performance computers.
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Walch-Gassner, Astrophysics, University of Cologne
Speaker in Bonn:
Prof. Dr. Cristiano Porciani, Astrophysics, University of Bonn
Universities involved:
University of Cologne (applicant)
Institutions involved:
Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn
Forschungszentrum Jülich
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Bonn