Research in Germany

Germany is a top destination for PhD students, postdocs, and senior scientists. The website "Research in Germany" helps you to find your way to Germany, to seek for PhD positions, research jobs or funding opportunities. It describes the German research landscape and helps you plan your career and life in Germany. Welcome to Germany - the Land of Ideas!

Two female researchers are standing in a large solar centre at the DLR Jülich.

Why Germany

There are many good reasons for doing research in Germany. It is one of the most innovative, stable and well endowed research nations and its universities and research institutions are among the best in the world. Values like freedom and diversity as well as social and ecological responsibility are considered important to ensure knowledge gain and societal progress.

Explore

Your goal

Bachelor or master

PhD

Postdoc

Advanced research

A research position

Current developments & news

Find more

Here you will find a selection of the latest R&D news from German universities, non-university research institutes and industrial research facilities.

AWI biologist Dr Clara Hoppe (right) and doctoral student Klara Wolf take algae samples from the Kongsfjord, Spitsbergen, Arctic.

How heatwaves are affecting Arctic phytoplankton

The basis of the marine food web in the Arctic, the phytoplankton, responds to heatwaves much differently than to constantly elevated temperatures. This has been found by the first targeted experiments on the topic, which were recently conducted at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s AWIPEV Station. The phytoplankton’s behaviour primarily depends on the cooling phases after or between heatwaves, as shown in a study just released in the journal Science Advances.

May 17, 2024, 10:00:00 PM

Together with an international team, the senior author of the study on the effects of oxytocin was able to show that the

Can oxytocin help against loneliness? Study by Bonn University Hospital

Loneliness is not a disease. And yet it is a significant health problem. Depression, heart disease or dementia - people who are permanently lonely have a higher risk of becoming ill. The team led by Dr. Jana Lieberz from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), who also conducts research at the University of Bonn, and Prof. Dr. Dirk Scheele (Ruhr University Bochum) have investigated how loneliness can be specifically combated. In a controlled study, in which the universities of Oldenburg, Bochum, Freiburg and Haifa (Israel) were also involved, 78 women and men who felt lonely were given the so-called "cuddle hormone" oxytocin as a nasal spray.

May 17, 2024, 5:03:37 PM

Jellyfish may dominate the future Arctic Ocean

Climate change is putting countless marine organisms under pressure. However, jellyfish in the world’s oceans could actually benefit from the rising water temperatures – also and especially in the Arctic Ocean. In computer models, they exposed eight widespread Arctic jellyfish species to rising temperatures. The result: by the second half of this century, all but one of the species in question could substantially expand their habitat poleward. The ‘lion’s mane jellyfish’ could even triple the size of its habitat – with potentially dramatic consequences for the marine food web and Arctic fish populations. The study was just released in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

May 17, 2024, 2:56:02 PM

A remarkable spiny-legged arachnid from the coal forests of America

More than 300 million years ago, all sorts of arachnids crawled around in the Carboniferous coal forests. There were also some quite strange-looking arachnids which belonged to groups that are now long extinct. One such fossil was described in a new paper published in Journal of Paleontology, co-authored by Paul Selden from the University of Kansas and Jason Dunlop from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Douglassarachne acanthopoda comes from the Mazon Creek locality in Illinois, USA, and is 308 million years old. This compact arachnid is characterized by its remarkably robust and spiny legs, such that it is quite unlike any other arachnid known: living or extinct.

May 17, 2024, 12:56:57 PM

First author Mirjam Thielen (left) and last author Elena Lesch (right) with cultures of the model moss Physcomitrium and Head of Department Prof. Volker Knoop with a model of PPR78, one of the “Tipp-Ex” proteins investigated.

Plants Restrict Use of “Tipp-Ex Proteins”

Plants have special corrective molecules at their disposal that can make retrospective modifications to copies of genes. However, it would appear that these “Tipp-Ex proteins” do not have permission to work in all areas of the cell, only being used in chloroplasts and mitochondria. A study by the University of Bonn has now explained why this is the case. It suggests that the correction mechanism would otherwise modify copies that have nothing wrong with them, with fatal consequences for the cell. The findings have now been published in “The Plant Journal.”

May 17, 2024, 12:36:50 PM

Sunset over the island of Helgoland in the German Bight, where the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology obtained their samples.

Zombie cells in the sea: Viruses keep the most common marine bacteria in check

Marine microbes control the flux of matter and energy essential for life in the oceans. Among them, the bacterial group SAR11 accounts for about a third of all the bacteria found in surface ocean waters. A study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, now reveals that at times nearly 20% of SAR11 cells are infected by viruses, significantly reducing total cell numbers. The viruses can also transform these once thriving bacteria into zombies, a phenomenon observed for the first time and widespread in the oceans.

May 17, 2024, 12:20:23 PM