Awards

Prizes and awards received by our researchers, students, and our institute are summarized in this section.

Grace Hopper, BIG, and other honors in 2026: A number of outstanding student research recognized

From compact language models to intelligent robotics and the mathematical foundations of complex systems: This year’s recipients of the Grace Hopper Award, the BIG Thesis Awards, and the Johannes Kepler Scholarship demonstrate the wide-ranging and forward-looking nature of Computer Science at the University of Bonn. Their achievements were honored in a festive ceremony at the institute’s summer celebration.

Prof. Matthew Smith Awarded ERC Advanced Grant

Digital technologies and security legislation shape the daily lives of millions of people. Careless or abusive use can restrict fundamental rights, fail to adequately curb online hate and abuse, or create new technological risks. To develop solutions to these ethical and technical conflicts, Prof. Dr. Matthew Smith, a computer scientist at the University of Bonn and the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics (FKIE), has been awarded a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The European Union will provide approximately €2.5 million over the next five years to support his project.

University of Bonn Students Triumph with Autonomous Racecar

LamarRacing, a student AI and robotics project at the University of Bonn, won an award at the RoboRacer Competition held as part of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026 in Vienna. In the time trial competition, the Bonn-based LamarRacing team posted the best performance of the entire field and won the time trial classification by a wide margin. For this achievement, the team received the “Best Performance Overall” award. In the subsequent 1-on-1 race format, LamarRacing finished in fourth place.

Two Years of the Marvin Supercomputer: High-Performance Computing Opens New Paths in Research

Two years after it went online, the Marvin supercomputer has become a central research infrastructure at the University of Bonn. The Institute of Computer Science, in particular, has played a key role in this development: At the community event, Prof. Dr. Maren Bennewitz, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Gall, and Prof. Dr. Petra Mutzel highlighted the importance of high-performance computing, AI, and data-driven methods for research in Bonn.

Congratulations NimbRo@Home: Our household robots win the RoboCup German open again

Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Sven Behnke, the domestic service robots impress at the open German championships in Nuremberg.

Cybersecurity start-up “Code Intelligence” (Institute of Computer Science IV) wins AI Award

Prof Dr Sven Behnke appointed ELLIS Fellow

Dr. Matthias Frank and Laser & Light Lab get ILDA awards

Student of Computer Science in Bonn wins international software challenge PACE

Prof. Florian Bernard receives 1.6 million euro Starting Grant from the European Research Council

Award for outstanding research work at the CVPR 2024 conference

Household Robots NimbRo@home are World Champions

Award: Presentation of the first Best Poster Award

Outstanding computer science students honoured: Grace Hopper Prize and BIG Master/Bachelor Thesis Prize

Teaching Award of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences 2024 goes to Dr Herman Haverkort

DSIS Research Group Receives Multiple Awards at ISWC 2023

Christian Bungartz Receives AFCEA Award

Prof. Dr. Hildegard Kühne Receives ERC Starting Grant

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Daria Tomala
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Daria Tomala is a consultant for science communication at the Institute for Computer Science at the University of Bonn and at the Bonn Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it).

Her work focuses on press work on research activities and scientific results.

Maximilian Waidhas
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Maximilian Waidhas is a communication designer at the Institute for Computer Science at the University of Bonn, the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it) and for the AI Service Center WestAI.

His work focuses on corporate design, (ai-based) user interface and user experience design as well as photography and video production.