With researchers at the University of Bonn securing total funding worth €293.7 million from the DFG from 2020 to 2022, the University of Excellence has increased its third-party funding yet again, following €208.5 million in 2021 and €181.7 million back in 2014–2016. This rise, which the Funding Atlas calls “the sharpest among the top 40 universities,” is thanks not least to the outstanding successes that the University has enjoyed with its Excellence Strategy.
At individual subject group level, its performance in the humanities and social sciences is particularly noteworthy this year. Attracting total funding of €53.1 million put it 6th in the DFG’s Germany-wide comparison, a full nine places higher than in 2021. With €115.9 million, life sciences climbed by two spots to 10th, while natural sciences came in 9th with €62 million in funding. Even though the engineering sciences are only represented by a few subjects at the University, it still made it into the 40 universities included in the DFG Funding Atlas, occupying 34th spot with €11.2 million.
Aside from the main rankings, the University of Bonn has also enjoyed particular success in two other contests. With a total of 18, the University of Bonn can lay claim to more Leibniz Prize winners since the award was introduced in 1986 than anywhere else in Germany apart from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The University also ranks 3rd nationwide for recipients of European Research Council (ERC) funding between 2021 and 2022 with 20 researchers. Even in this short timeframe, therefore, it has already had more researchers awarded funding than in the whole period from 2014 to 2019, a “remarkable” development in the words of the study’s authors. Projects funded by a total of 53 grants (Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants, Synergy Grants and Proof of Concept Grants) are currently under way at the University of Bonn, another new record.
Rector Professor Michael Hoch is delighted: “With their top-level research, our exceptional researchers are the key guarantee of this fantastic success. Yet again, the results demonstrate the University of Bonn’s constant dynamism and improved performance across the board. They confirm in impressive fashion that our Excellence Strategy is on the right track and give us a huge amount of fresh momentum for the years ahead.”
The University of Bonn was the only one in Germany to be awarded six Clusters of Excellence in 2018 and has received annual funding running into the tens of millions of euros from the federal and state governments since 2019 in its capacity as a University of Excellence.
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