Research

In the middle of the large Chilean Atacama desert, a team of Polish astronomers are patiently monitoring millions of celestial bodies night after night with the help of a modern robotic telescope.

Muchao Qu is pursuing his PhD at FAU´s Institute of Polymer Materials (LSP) where he carries out research on Conductive Polymer Composites (CPC). In this interview he gives a very personal insight into his stay in Germany and at FAU.

Researchers from FAU, together with colleagues from other universities and partners in industry, have discovered how the sugar gets into the phloem of sugar beet.

It has been determined by a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Ana‐Sunčana Smith working in collaboration with German and French colleagues that physical effects play an important role in cell-cell adhesion and its maintenance.

The aim of chemotherapy is the selective destruction of cancer cells in the body of the patient. Researchers at FAU have now managed to gain more detailed insights into the effects of chemotherapeutic agents on healthy neurons.

The loss of heart muscle cells is the main cause of impaired cardiac function. While investigating factors involved in human cardiomyocyte proliferation, researchers at FAU discovered a molecule which activates a specific receptor in the cell nucleus.

A team at FAU has managed to selectively influence the properties of hybrid systems consisting of carbon nanostructures and a dye.

Physicists at FAU and Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) have accomplished a quantum leap in light research. They have managed to capture the behaviour of extremely short laser pulses during focusing by means of very high spatial and temporal resolution.

In view of climate change and the needs of the energy reform, it has become important to significantly increase the efficiency of organic solar cells. Physicists and chemists at FAU collaborating in an international joint project have now successfully described a mechanism with which it may be possible to achieve this.

The particularly aggressive brain tumours known as glioblastomas often prove to be resistant to chemotherapy. The team of physicians headed by Nicolai Savaskan of the Chair for Neurosurgery at FAU has now identified a key gene that could be responsible for this.