Annual General meeting in November
This year, we will meet in Würzburg on November 21 and 22 for our Annual General Meeting (AGM). The official part will take place on Saturday, November 22. If you would like to participate at short notice, you are welcome to join the online broadcast. If you can imagine becoming a member of the executive council (EC), we would all be delighted. If you would like to join our EC, please send us an email expressing your interest so that we can elect you to the board at the AGM.
New record in numbers of doctoral researchers
The Federal Statistical Office (destatis) has recorded a new record number of doctoral students for 2024: 212,400 are enrolled. This represents an increase of 7,500 or 4% compared to 2023. Women currently make up slightly less than half of our colleagues. So there is a lot of work for doctoral student representatives and doctoral councils. This makes it all the more important that we are given more say and that there are better support concepts, such as those demanded by UniWinD.
Nobel Prizes for 2025
The 2025 Nobel Prizes were awarded in early October in Stockholm, once again honoring groundbreaking scientific achievements. In Physics, John M. Martinis, Michel H. Devoret, and Raymond Clarke received the prize for their pioneering work in quantum computing. Their research into superconducting quantum mechanics laid the foundation for stable and scalable quantum processors—a milestone for the future of information technology.
Chemistry, Medicine, and Literature also celebrated transformative discoveries. The Chemistry Prize was awarded to Omar Yaghi, Makoto Kitagawa, and Robson for their development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), molecular sponges that open new possibilities in gas storage and catalysis. In Medicine, Brunkow, Ramsdell, and Sakaguchi were honored for their discoveries in peripheral immune tolerance – a key mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking the body’s own tissues and offers new hope for treating autoimmune diseases. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, whose visionary prose explores the fractures of our time with apocalyptic depth and poetic clarity.
Our project: PhD 101 continues!
We continue to encourage you all to share your experiences from your doctoral studies with us. For our “PhD 101” series, we are looking for tips, resources, and personal insights that you have gained during your time as a doctoral candidate. Please send us your contributions for the next newsletter by email or via the contact form on our website. We would be delighted to involve as many of you as possible in this project.
From pig to human – first liver transplant succesful
In October 2025, a team of Chinese doctors achieved a medical breakthrough: for the first time, a genetically modified pig liver was successfully transplanted into a human. The 71-year-old patient survived for 171 days while the animal organ performed vital functions. This milestone could pave the way for new solutions in the fight against organ shortage.
