Emmy Noether funding for two LMU researchers

The influence of gene regulation on the immune system and fundamental questions of modern cosmology – these are the topics pursued by Jonathan Bohlen and Jiamin Hou, who have been awarded funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the Emmy Noether Program. Each award amounts to 1.85 million euros for a period of six years.

How immune cells make decisions

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Dr. Jonathan Bohlen is a research group leader at LMU’s Gene Center Munich. For his research, he has been awarded €1.85 million in funding through the Emmy Noether Program. Over the next six years, his project “Specialized mRNA Translation as a Component of Human T Cell Immunity” will investigate how molecular mechanisms of gene regulation influence the immune system.

T cells play a central role in our immune system. To combat infections or recognize tumor cells, they must adapt to new situations within a short timeframe. This requires the cells not only to regulate gene activity but, above all, to rapidly and precisely adjust protein production. A key mechanism in this process is so-called translation, whereby the genetic information stored in messenger RNA (mRNA) is translated into proteins. This process is particularly energy-intensive and is one of the least well understood elements of immune regulation.

In his new project, Bohlen is systematically investigating for the first time how specialized protein synthesis mechanisms control T cell function. The starting point is a rare inherited immune deficiency where a defect in a factor involved in the regulation of translation leads to increased susceptibility to mycobacteria. “We hypothesize that fine-tuning of translation thus plays a decisive role in determining how T cells respond to pathogens, stress, and activation signals,” Bohlen says.

The goal of the project is to gain a better understanding of specific T cell signaling pathways, to identify previously unknown T cell-specific mRNAs, and to clarify how these cells can maintain high levels of protein production even under severe stress. “Overall, the project aims to provide a new understanding of how immune cells make biological decisions,” Bohlen says. “These insights will lay the foundations for improved diagnosis of rare immune defects and for the further development of T cell-based therapies.”

Lineaments of a new physics

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Dr. Jiamin Hou has led a research group at LMU since January 2026. Through the Emmy Noether Programme, the astrophysicist has been awarded funding of 1.85 million euros for a six-year period. In her project, A Cosmic Voyage: From the Early to the Late-Time Universe with N-point Functions, Hou draws on a range of new methods to investigate current questions in cosmology, using extensive data sets from large-scale galaxy surveys.

Several fundamental questions remain open in modern cosmology, including what drives the accelerated expansion of the universe and how cosmic structures formed and evolved over time. “In our research group, we aim to build a bridge between observations and fundamental physics by developing and applying innovative higher-order statistical methods in the data-driven era to probe the early and late universe,” says Hou.

With ongoing and upcoming galaxy surveys mapping millions of galaxies, researchers now have access to unprecedented data volumes. “It is timely to challenge underlying assumptions and to extract maximal cosmological information from small, nonlinear scales,” emphasizes Hou. The project pursues two central goals. First, Hou and her team will perform precision tests of the standard cosmological model and the mysterious accelerated expansion of the universe. Second, they will explore the physical mechanisms that shaped the very early universe, including models of cosmic inflation and possible violations of fundamental symmetries. “By combining new methods with unprecedented data, we aim to uncover unexpected features of new physics.”