Pheno-Inspect GmbH, an AgTech start-up that emerged from research work at the University of Bonn, has successfully closed its first seed financing round. In addition to NRW.BANK and several private investors via the Companisto business angel network, one of the leading agricultural machinery groups, CLAAS, has also joined the company as a strategic investor. Pheno-Inspect GmbH was founded in 2020 as a start-up of the University of Bonn by Dr. Philipp Lottes and Prof. Dr. Cyrill Stachniss (Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation and Cluster of Excellence 'PhenoRob').

As part of the Genesis-D project led by the GFZ Potsdam, German institutions are preparing for the European Space Agency's (ESA) new Genesis satellite mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2028.

  The largest contributions in the history of the European Space Agency, €22.3 billion, have been approved at its Council meeting at Ministerial level in Bremen, Germany. Researchers at the University of Bonn are among those elated by this record sum, because it also includes strong funding for ESA’s Earth observation program. This will benefit Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1502 “Regional Climate Change: Disentangling the Role of Land Use and Water Management,” which is based at the University. Researchers from CRC 1502 are involved in ESA’s Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM), which is developing new satellites in order to furnish precise data about our planet’s water resources, among other things.

  The EU’s Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall visited Bonn on December 1 to find out about the research being done in the University of Bonn’s PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence. Discussions focused on three main topics: digital agriculture, sustainable food systems and preserving biodiversity.

Extreme weather events such as heavy rain and flooding pose growing challenges for early warning systems worldwide. Researchers at the University Bonn, the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have developed RiverMamba, a new AI model that can predict river discharges and flood risks more accurately than previous methods. The research paper, which shows potential for climate adaptation and disaster control, has been accepted for NeurIPS 2025 – a sign of scientific excellence in Bonn-based research. RiverMamba thus makes an important contribution to climate adaptation and risk prevention – topics that are receiving special attention worldwide, particularly around UN World Tsunami Awareness Day on November 5th.

The University of Bonn is at the forefront of artificial intelligence research. As a co-founder of the Lamarr Institute, its scientists work closely with colleagues from the Technical University of Dortmund and the Fraunhofer Institutes for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin and for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund. Together, they are developing technologies that will transform many aspects of our lives. The institute’s mission is to create AI that is not only powerful but also trustworthy, sustainable, and socially relevant. In doing so, the University of Excellence Bonn is sending out a clear message: progress requires responsibility.