Research News

It is unpleasant, strange and often comes as a surprise: shame. But why do we feel it? An international study that involved researchers from the University of Greifswald has shed new light on the emotion of shame that has long been considered harmful. The conclusion: shame is not merely an…

The amount of light in the sea is changing. Coasts shine brighter, the water is getting murkier. What is barely visible to swimmers has a huge effect on algae, fish and plankton. The international research project ISOLUME (IndicatorS Of changing Lightscapes in Underwater Marine Ecosystems)…

Giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of up to 70 centimetres that lived around 300 million years ago have fascinated researchers for decades. They have investigated how such giants were able to fly at all. A new study with the participation of the University of Greifswald now questions a…

Two innovative collaborative research projects, which are funded within the framework of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s State Excellence Initiative, started at the University of Greifswald on 1 April 2026. The two projects ‘BehAIve’ and ‘PIRATE’ will use cutting-edge methods and artificial intelligence…

How can useful information be drawn from large amounts of genomic data? This question is at the heart of PD Dr. Katharina Hoff’s work at the University of Greifswald. Her research aims to improve the automatic prediction of genes in genomes with the help of machine-learning processes. With the…

The oceans are a huge carbon reservoir, and microorganisms play a crucial role in carbon storage. They break down complex sugar compounds, so-called glycans, and thereby regulate how the seas store and release carbon. However, how these processes actually work is still largely unknown. Researchers…

The University of Greifswald and University Medicine Greifswald spent more external funding than ever before in 2025. Total expenditure amounted to more than 72 million euros. 35 million euros of this were spent by the University and 37.8 million euros by University Medicine. Both institutions thus…

A team of researchers from the University of Innsbruck, supported by Prof. Dr. Lutz Schweikhard from the Institute of Physics at the University of Greifswald, has set a milestone in physics: the team succeeded for the first time in storing electrically charged helium droplets in an ion trap for up…

What makes spider silk so extraordinarily strong and elastic at the same time? This was the focus of recent investigations carried out by researchers from the University of Greifswald, the University of Bonn and the Museum of Natural Science in Buenos Aires. In material and behavioural analyses,…

Drained peatlands in the EU emit around 232 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent every year - almost twice as much as the EU member states have so far declared to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is the conclusion of a study now published in Nature Communications with the…