Newsletter of the Rectorate - Christmas 2025
Dear students and members of the Ruhr University Bochum community,
As we enter the new year, we are leaving behind a particularly eventful 2025. The upcoming holiday period and transition into 2026 will give everyone the chance to recharge their batteries and start the new year with fresh energy.
2026 will continue to be shaped by the Excellence Strategy, in which Ruhr University Bochum and TU Dortmund University are applying together as “Ruhr Innovation Lab”. Over the coming months, we will intensively prepare for the upcoming site visit. The decision will be made in autumn, likely in early October. If you wish to learn more about the Ruhr Innovation Lab, visit the homepage or listen to our new podcast, which will accompany our joint application and the road to autumn of 2026. The announcement aptly states:
“Sleep for a week! This is what the two rectors of Ruhr University Bochum and TU Dortmund University wished for after submitting their joint application for the Excellence Strategy. Did it work? They let us know in the first episode of the podcast Think. Try. Transform.”
Future episodes cover the work of the Clusters of Excellence, doctoral student supervision, and start-up activities at our universities. After the site visit in May 2026, the two rectors Martin Paul and Manfred Bayer will once again visit the podcast and answer your questions. Anyone who wishes to submit questions can do so now via email.
The podcast is available now wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as here:
However, 2025 was not only about the successful performance of our two Clusters of Excellence and our application in the Excellence Strategy. We celebrated “RUB 60: Built to Change since 1965” with various promotions and initiatives on our campus. Through their hard work, our students allowed us to celebrate a Campus Party for the first time after a long hiatus, and the RUB community took a stand for open, united, and free scientific and academic culture.
Furthermore, this year we were once again able to record many successes and achieve excellent rankings in research, teaching, and knowledge transfer, and we are also continuously developing the Research Alliance with our partner universities within the University Alliance Ruhr. Speaking of partners: Together with the RAG Foundation and the Initiativkreis Ruhr, the University Alliance Ruhr secured multi-million euro funding this summer for the Bryck Start-up Alliance to establish a European deep-tech hotspot in the Ruhr region.
You can also read about this and much more in our Year in Review. Be sure to take a look, as 2025 was a particularly eventful and exciting year.
What are we taking with us into the coming year? Definitely the boost from the joint application as a Consortium of Excellence, but also the good feeling that we made it through 2025 as a community and showed solidarity when we took a firm stance for democracy and diversity over the summer. Please maintain this drive, because we not only want to be excellent, but also united and diverse!
It is in that spirit that we wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a relaxing holiday season!
Kornelia Freitag, Isolde Karle, Achim von Keudell, Günther Meschke, Martin Paul, Christina Reinhardt