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Friday 9 January the buildings of the University of Groningen will close.

The Milky Way is becoming less visible in the Netherlands. There is more and more artificial light. Too much light is bad for nature and humans. But how dark is it really? The University of Groningen has a darkness monitoring network, ‘but we can’t measure everywhere,’ says ‘darkness guardian’ Theo Jurriens. The public can therefore help during the national star counting campaign.

The University of Groningen, in collaboration with Wageningen University & Research, TNO, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Hanze University of Applied Sciences and industry partners, has secured a €2 million grant from the NWO NXTGEN Hightech programme.

We underestimate the value of minority languages and dialects, says Aurélie Joubert, assistant professor of Language and Society. The Frenchwoman is intrigued by the Gronings dialect and whether music in this dialect is changing people’s attitudes towards each other and their regional language.

Master's student Thijs van der Laan has developed an AI language model that helps people with aphasia find words. His research project, entitled ‘AI-phasie’, won him the Impact Award from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen in the category Students.

Thijs van der Laan and Prof. Giovanni Maglia won this year's FSE Impact Award.

University of Groningen professor Giovanni Maglia has developed a tool for investigating the causes of disease and health: analysing individual proteins using nanopores. To this end, he founded the company Portal Biotech. On 5 January, Maglia received the Faculty of Science and Engineering Impact Award.

Valika Smeulders is head of history at the Rijksmuseum and was recently appointed as Professor by special appointment in the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the UG. She sees her task as showing ‘what you don’t see, but was once there.’ This was also her ambition when she worked as curator of the major Slavery exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in 2021. To her mind, this is the way to help people connect with history.

The new regional initiative StudentLines has been awarded almost €4 million in funding by the National Programme Groningen. Thanks to this investment, the University of Groningen (UG) and Hanze UAS Groningen can join forces to take the next step in constructing a sustainable infrastructure for teaching data and educational research.

Prof. Mariano Méndez has received the prestigious Argentine 'Premio RAÍCES 2025' (ROOTS award).