News

Prof. Jürgen Ruland, from TUM’s Rechts der Isar Hospital, will receive the 2021 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. The Professor of Clinical Chemistry is being honored for his outstanding scientific work in the field of immunology, which has led to a fundamentally new understanding of the signal transmission pathways in immune and cancer cells, as announced by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The most important German research award includes 2.5 million euros in prize money. The award winner can use this money for future research.

Professor Heiko Briesen and Johanna Baehr have been honored with the "Bavarian Prize for Excellence in Teaching" at state universities in Bavaria. Bernd Sibler, Bavarian Minister of Science and the Arts, recognized the process engineer and electrical engineer at the suggestion of the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

The positively charged protons in atomic nuclei should actually repel each other, and yet even heavy nuclei with many protons and neutrons stick together. The so-called strong interaction is responsible for this. Prof. Laura Fabbietti and her research group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now developed a method to precisely measure the strong interaction utilizing particle collisions in the ALICE experiment at CERN in Geneva.

In the first-ever online edition of its annual celebration, the TUM community looked back on the year to date. Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has been one of the most challenging years in its history. Remarking on the successful transition to digital teaching and the many excellent results by TUM researchers, President Thomas F. Hofmann voiced optimism for the future. In recognition of outstanding commitment and achievements, he announced awards for numerous TUM members.

Silicones are tried and tested in the private and professional domains. In many applications, however, expensive precious metals are required as catalysts to transform the liquid intermediate products to durable elastic polymers. A research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Munich-based WACKER Group has now developed a curing process that works without precious metals.

Viruses are infectious organic structures that spread by transmission and can only multiply within a suitable host cell. To understand how new viruses are created, it is necessary to determine the position of the individual genes precisely and comprehensively and to clarify what these genes do. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has found a previously hidden gene that may have contributed to the unique biology of SARS-CoV-2 and thus to its rapid spread. 

Jia Chen, Professor for Environmental Sensing and Modelling at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), was included in this year's list of the "Young Elite - Top 40 under 40" in the category "Society and Science". The German finance magazine Capital has been presenting this award since 2007.

Last night three teams were honored with the TUM IdeAward for their technology-based start-up ideas. They respectively developed a rotating chemical reactor for use in the pharmaceuticals industry and water treatment, a technology platform for sustainable production of yeast oil and a cost-efficient surgical navigation system.

The ability to differentiate between self and potentially harmful non-self is vital for the integrity and survival of organisms. In most organisms, the so-called innate immune system is responsible for the recognition of such intruders. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (MPIB) has studied how skin cells identify viruses as non self – and trigger inflammatory responses: In this process the cytosolic sensor NLRP1 plays an important role.

The Borexino experiment research team has succeeded in detecting neutrinos from the sun's second fusion process, the Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen cycle (CNO cycle) for the first time. This means that all of the theoretical predictions on how energy is generated within the sun have now also been experimentally verified. The findings are the result of years of efforts devoted to bringing the background sources in the energy range of the CNO neutrinos under control.