Research news

Materials science meets climate protection – innovative membrane adsorbers will be used in the future to efficiently and cost-effectively recover CO₂ from air and exhaust gases. In the SAFE-CO₂ project, Saarland University and several research institutes – coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB – are pooling their expertise to develop suitable membrane modules for industrial purposes.
[...]

Why do cancer therapies have different success rates in men and women? How do immune cells tailor their attacks on tumours? Dr. Hsin-Fang Chang from the Center for Integrative Physiology and Molecular Medicine (CIPMM) and the Center for Gender-specific Biology and Medicine (CGBM) at Saarland University has been awarded more than €330,000 in research funding from the prestigious Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation (EKFS) to investigate these very questions. [...]

The internationally renowned structural biologist Nicholas Taylor is joining Saarland University as an Alexander von Humboldt Professor bringing with him award funding of €9.9 million. Saarland University was successful with its nomination for Germany's most highly endowed research award. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation announced the eight award winners today (10 June).  [...]

Whether rancid nuts in chocolate or unnoticed mould, quality defects in products pose an enormous risk for food manufacturers, ranging from costly recalls to reputation damage. Existing testing methods are often slow and expensive. At the SME Innovation Day organised by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on 11 June in Berlin, the SENT-GC-MOS research project presented portable gas chromatography detectors that test food for spoilage in a matter of seconds and at low cost. [...]

How do software developers respond when they come across code they do not intuitively understand? Neuropsychologists have now explored this question by recording brain activity alongside eye movements. A team of psycholinguists then compared the findings with established patterns from natural language processing and identified some surprising parallels. The interdisciplinary team from Saarland University and Chemnitz University of Technology has now published its study in Scientific Reports. [...]

How are digital tools such as ChatGPT changing the study and teaching of history? How can students and lecturers take advantage of these new technologies – and how can they avoid the pitfalls? From 10 to 12 June, experts in history and educational science will explore these questions together with students. [...]

On 8 May, the Calogero Pagliarello Foundation awarded prizes at the Saarland University campus in Homburg. This year, for the first time, a total of four prizes were presented – the Calogero Pagliarello Research Prize, with an award of €3,000, and three Calogero Pagliarello Study Prizes, each with an award of €2,000. All the research projects offer promising approaches that could improve the treatment of previously incurable or rare diseases in the future. [...]

Professor Andreas Keller and his team at Saarland University have been selected to join the Collaborative Research Network (CRN). This comes with funding from the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative, in collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF). The aim is to identify drug candidates that could help treat Parkinson’s disease. [...]

What impact have ancient and medieval narratives and legends had on European history – and what impact do they continue to have in the present day? A conference at Saarland University will explore this question from 21 to 23 May. Thirty scholars from Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany will examine myths and identities in European history from an interdisciplinary perspective. [...]

Nitratdünger sorgt für bessere Ernten, belastet aber auch unser Trinkwasser. Bisherige Filtrierungsverfahren verlagern das Problem oft nur: Das Nitrat wird zwar aus dem Wasser entfernt, ist aber nach wie vor in der Welt. Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler der Universität des Saarlandes und der Universität Graz suchen nun nach einem Weg, Nitrat nicht nur aus dem Wasser zu filtern, sondern es in derselben Membran auch chemisch in harmlose Stoffe, im Idealfall Stickstoff, umzuwandeln. [...]