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Last week, the Sveriges Riksbank handed out the Nobel Prize for Economy to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt for their research on economic growth and innovation. In contrast, UG professor Klaus Hubacek envisions a world in which every human can flourish within the limits of this planet. He argues that economic growth is not the right benchmark, and we should seriously consider which innovations are desirable and for whom.

We have listed all our magazine articles from September to Christmas 2025. So you can read them again at your leisure during the holidays. In each article, a UG researcher talks about their field.

Students, other inhabitants of Groningen, and Knol's Koek: these are the ingredients for the latest episode of the RUG & Co. podcast. The focus is on the collaboration between the University of Groningen and the Municipality of Groningen in the project ‘Living together, researching together’. In this project, students, residents, and professionals join forces in a study of social cohesion in Groningen neighborhoods.

Prof. Ben Feringa has won the Feynman Experiment Prize for pioneering the control of molecular motion.

Open Science NL* awards 45 projects that strengthen infrastructure for open science in the Netherlands.n. Our University of Groningen Press is involved in 2 of these projects:

Ordering a coffee at that nice new corner shop: most of us do this without thinking about it. For people with language impairments (such as aphasia), however, it can pose a serious challenge. What if AI-driven models could help these people – for example, with a smartphone app? Computational linguistics researcher Frank Tsiwah is exploring various ways to make this happen. ‘If it can make a single life better, then it will be worth it.’

BiloMedics, ModAlgae, and Protyon have been selected for the Top 30 of the Academic Startup Competition, the competition for the most promising academic startups in the Netherlands. The Academic Startup Competition is an initiative of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, Techleap, Universities of the Netherlands, UMCNL, ScaleNL, TNO, and Biotech Booster.

In 2025, the UG was once again active in many areas. Researchers and other staff members were awarded grants or prizes, made an impact with their research, and collaborated with various societal partners, in some cases on innovative projects. Below is a small, varied selection from the many news items published by the UG this year.

Alexander Belyy receives the FEBS Excellence Award 2025 for researching pathogenic microorganisms that ‘hijack’ their host cells’ cytoskeleton in order to escape the immune system.

An international team of astronomers, including Tim Lichtenberg and PhD student Emma Postolec, has found strong evidence for an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet. The ultra-hot “super-Earth” TOI-561 b appears to be surrounded by a thick layer of gases above a global magma ocean.