Alexander von Humboldt Professorship
With five million euros, the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Professorship is the most highly endowed research award in Germany and attracts top international researchers to German universities.
Information on applying for an AvH professorship and the procedure is available from the Research Management Division.
Current AvH professors at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences are:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Winter
Division of Computer Science, Quantum Information and Computation (2025–2030)
Andreas Winter conducts groundbreaking basic research in the field of quantum informatics. He is primarily concerned with quantum Shannon theory, which investigates the ultimate physical limits of information storage, transmission, and processing. He came to the University of Cologne in 2025 from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain.
Prof. Dr. Bart Thomma
Institute for Plant Sciences, Phytopathology (2021–2026)
Bart Thomma is an expert in phytopathology and came to the University of Cologne in 2021 from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. His work focuses on the interaction between plants and microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria in the rhizosphere. He heads the "Centre for Microbial Interactomics" at the University of Cologne.