Research

Prof. Dr. Christian Bogdan und Prof. Dr. Klaus Überla are members of the Standing Committee on Vaccination at the Robert Koch Institute. In their position as members of the STIKO, the two researchers from Erlangen are involved in drawing up a Covid-19 vaccination strategy for Germany. It may even be finalised this year.

This year, six FAU researchers are among the most highly cited researchers in their field. The Highly Cited Researchers List names almost 6200 of the most influential researchers across the globe in 21 different disciplines.

Babies are capable of moving extremely quickly. This is crucial to the development of the human nervous system. An international team of researchers involving FAU has now developed a method which can be used to quantitatively assess these movements at the level of the individual neurons. In future, this method could be used to detect disorders in the development of motor skills at an early stage.

Palaeontologists at FAU and the University of Calgary in Canada have provided new proof of parallel evolution: conodonts, early vertebrates from the Permian period, adapted to new habitats in almost identical ways despite living in different geographical regions. The researchers were able to prove that this was the case using fossil teeth found in different geographical locations.

The vision of the future of miniaturisation has produced a series of synthetic molecular motors that are driven by a range of energy sources and can carry out various movements. A research group at FAU has now managed to control a catalysis reaction using a light-controlled motor. 

For many students this winter semester is the second semester they have spent studying during the coronavirus pandemic, with virtually all teaching being offered remotely. They often suffer from a lack of motivation when studying from home and there is a lack of structure in their day to day lives. In a study, researchers at FAU have now discovered that mentoring programmes can reduce these problems and help students become more successful during an online semester.

A research team at FAU and Universitätsklinikum Erlangen have unlocked a mechanism in which liver cancer cells take a substance formed by benign liver cells and use it for their malignant growth. The Walter-Siegenthaler-Gesellschafft für Fortschritte in der Inneren Medizin has awarded the lead author of the study Dr. Peter Dietrich with their Science Award 2020 in recognition of this work.

Infections with the human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) are transmitted via bodily fluids that contain cells. A research group led by Dr. Andrea Thoma-Kreß from the Chair of Clinical and Molecular Virology at FAU is currently investigating the HTLV-1 virus at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with approximately 2.3 million euros.

The Joint Science Conference (GWK) of the German federal states has just announced that FAU will receive funds to establish a National Centre for High Performance Computing (NHR). The NHR will open on 1 January 2021, as part of a nationwide network with seven other centres. The federal and state governments will provide a total of up to 625 million euros in funding.

Which photophysical properties does carbyne have? This was the subject of research carried out by scientists at FAU, the University of Alberta, Canada, and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which has led to a greater understanding of the properties of this unusual form of carbon.