News

Focus on Profile Topic Synthetic Biology

Under the motto “Synthetic Biology goes …”, the Matter and Materials (M+M) Research Field at TU Darmstadt hosted its third symposium. The event, held on October 21, 2025, at the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus, focused on current research activities in the field of synthetic biology and its diverse application prospects – from collaborations within the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) to robotics, nanosystems and nutrition.

MultiDrug-TDM: New LOEWE research cluster for medical technology

The new LOEWE research cluster ‘MultiDrug-TDM’, coordinated by TU Darmstadt, will receive 4.3 million euros state funding for four years, starting in January. The goal is to research a novel, intelligent sensor system to significantly improve paediatric cancer care. By measuring drug levels directly at the bedside, immediate adjustments and thus optimised personalized therapy will be possible.

TU professor Matthias Weigold has been appointed as a new member of the Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board. The head of the Institute for Production Management, Technology, and Machine Tools (PTW) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering will now contribute his expertise to the board, as announced today (May 22) by the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), which coordinates the advisory board.

In the search for “dark forces”, physicists came across deformed nuclei

When world-leading teams join forces, new findings are bound to be made. This is what happened when quantum physicists from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg combined atomic and nuclear physics with unprecedented accuracy using two different methods of measurement. Together with new calculations of the structure of atomic nuclei, theoretical physicists from the Technical University of Darmstadt and Leibniz University Hannover were able to show that measurements on the electron shell of an atom can provide information about the deformation of the atomic nucleus. At the same time, the precision measurements have set new limits regarding the strength of a potential dark force between neutrons and electrons. The results have been published in the current issue of the scientific journal “Physical Review Letters”.

Using X-ray pulses in the attosecond range, scientists were able to increase the brightness and resolution of images of ultrafast processes in their natural environment.

Cluster of Excellence applications are complete

Applications for the Excellence Clusters funding line under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder are now closed. Hessian universities have submitted seven full applications, three of which are from TU Darmstadt. The decision will be made in May.