The Bonn-Melbourne Research Excellence Fund and Joint PhD Scheme

Left to right: University of Bonn's Rector Michael Hoch and University of Melbourne's Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell shake hands after signing a renewed Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation Agreement.

A senior delegation from Bonn University in Germany has visited the University of Melbourne, and over several days delegates visited their counterparts and explored the deepening of existing, and development of new, research collaborations.

The University of Bonn is one of the University’s longest standing and deepest international research partners.

Since 2016, this partnership has benefited more than 70 joint PhD candidates, and hundreds of researchers across the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, Faculty of Business and Economics, Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering and IT, through the support of joint PhD and seed funding programs.

The delegation to Melbourne was led by Rector Michael Hoch, Vice-Rector Birgit Münch and Dean of Medicine Bernd Weber.

As part of the Universities’ ongoing collaboration, Rector Michael Hoch and Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell renewed the existing Memorandum of Understanding, and signed a Cooperation Agreement, to continue running the Bonn-Melbourne Research Excellence Fund and joint PhD call for proposals, for the next two to three years.

A highlight during the delegation's visit was the announcement of this year’s joint funding awardees:

Research Excellence Fund:

  • Professor Alastair Stewart (Melbourne) and Professor Elena Reckzeh (Bonn): Superfused Human Organoids to Study Metabolic Adaptation of the Gut in Response to Dietary Changes.
  • Professor Abbas Rajabifard (Melbourne) and Dr Mahsa Moghadas (Bonn): Advanced Resilience Analytics in the Digital Era: Knowledge Transfer on Harnessing Geospatial Data and Digital Twins.
  • Associate Professor Pierro Perucca (Melbourne) and Dr Julika Pitsch (Bonn): Molecular Pathology of Hippocampal Sclerosis: Detecting Pathogenic and Modifier Gene Variants in Hippocampal Tissue.

Joint PhDs:

  • Associate Professor Raymond Ching-Bong Wong (Melbourne) and Professor Volker Busskamp (Bonn): Project 1: Study of epigenetics and transcriptomic modifiers for retinal aging; Project 2: Aging of transdifferentiated and stem cell-derived human photoreceptors.
  • Professor Andrew Western (Melbourne) and Professor Julian Klaus (Bonn): Project 1: Understanding transit time in the catchment and incorporating reaction times into transit time models to improve the prediction of non-conservative pollutants (nitrate) in catchments; Project 2: Estimating information content of tracer data for catchment transit time modelling.
  • Dr Dominic Dwyer (Melbourne) and Professor Eva-Christina Schulte (Bonn): Projects 1 and 2: Using artificial intelligence approaches to identify subgroups of individuals at-risk of the severe and debilitating mental illness of psychosis.