Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Engineering Sciences

The AEI faculty structures its 18 degree programmes across three thematic pillars — Agricultural Sciences, Food and Nutritional Sciences, and Geodesy & Geoinformation — at Bachelor's, Master's, and doctoral level.

Bachelor's programmes (B.Sc. / Staatsexamen):
- B.Sc. Agrarwissenschaften (Agricultural Sciences)
- B.Sc. Ernährungs- und Lebensmittelwissenschaften (Nutritional and Food Sciences)
- B.Sc. Geodäsie und Geoinformation (Geodesy and Geoinformation)
- B.Sc. Agrarwissenschaft Lehramt Berufskolleg (Agricultural Science, vocational teacher training)
- B.Sc. Ernährungs- und Hauswirtschaftswissenschaft Lehramt Berufskolleg
- Staatsexamen Lebensmittelchemie (State examination in Food Chemistry)

Master's programmes (M.Sc. / M.Ed.):
- M.Sc. Agricultural and Food Economics (AFECO)
- M.Sc. Agricultural Science and Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ARTS)
- M.Sc. Ernährungswissenschaften (Nutritional Sciences)
- M.Sc. Geodäsie und Geoinformation
- M.Sc. Geodetic Engineering
- M.Sc. Mobile Robotics
- M.Sc. Molekulare Lebensmitteltechnologie (Molecular Food Technology)
- M.Sc. Naturschutz und Landschaftsökologie (Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology)
- M.Sc. Crop Sciences
- M.Sc. Planetary Health
- M.Sc. Tierwissenschaften (Animal Sciences)
- M.Ed. Agrarwissenschaft Lehramt Berufskolleg
- M.Ed. Ernährungs- und Hauswirtschaftswissenschaft Lehramt Berufskolleg

Programmes combine ecological, social, and economic analysis of agro-ecosystems with scientific methodology for global food security. Several Master's programmes — including AFECO, ARTS, Mobile Robotics, Crop Sciences, Geodetic Engineering, and Planetary Health — are English-taught, making the faculty highly accessible to international students.

The University of Bonn holds Excellence University status under Germany's national Excellence Strategy — one of only eleven universities to achieve this distinction — and the AEI faculty is a core contributor to that title through the Excellence Cluster PhenoRob.

• €23.5 million in third-party funding (2024) across DFG, federal, and EU sources signals world-class, externally validated research that students directly participate in.
• 61 professorships across disciplines from precision geodesy to planetary health and bioeconomy give students access to a breadth of expertise found at very few European faculties.
• The BIGS Land and Food graduate school enables doctoral candidates to pursue international and interdisciplinary PhD research in a structured framework.
• The PhenoRob Career Fair (held every two years since 2023, in partnership with the Theodor Brinkmann-Stiftung) directly connects students with employers in robotics, geodesy, crop science, and agri-tech outside academia.
• The Agrarkarrieretag — running for over 10 years in partnership with AgroBrain/agrarzeitung — gives students annual access to leading agri-business employers at a dedicated faculty-level careers event.
• Spin-offs like Pheno-Inspect (AI crop disease detection), DynamoBot (autonomous farming robotics), and AutoDry (Gold Medal, EuroTier 2022, co-developed with GEA Farm Technologies) demonstrate that innovation here reaches the real economy.

Research at the AEI faculty spans six disciplines — Nutritional and Food Sciences, Geodesy and Geoinformation, Food and Resource Economics, Agricultural Engineering, Crop Sciences and Resource Conservation, and Animal Sciences — united by five interdisciplinary focal areas:

• Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production — led by the DFG Excellence Cluster PhenoRob (Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production), developing autonomous systems and sensor technologies to reduce the environmental footprint of farming without sacrificing yields.
• Social-ecological Transformation of Rural Areas in the Global South — anchored in SFB/TRR 228 Future Rural Africa, examining land use, biodiversity, and human welfare across African rural landscapes at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• Effects of Land Use Change and Water Management on Climate Change — focused on SFB 1502 DETECT, building hydrological model systems that reproduce observed climate patterns and simulate future scenarios.
• Planetary Health — transdisciplinary research at the human-animal-environment interface, integrating veterinary medicine, public health, environmental management, and agriculture.
• Bioeconomy — addressing trade-offs between food and energy security, water supply, soil quality, and biodiversity, with applied links to the bio innovation park Rheinland at Campus Klein-Altendorf.

Key research infrastructure:
- Campus Klein-Altendorf (CKA) — field station between Rheinbach and Meckenheim for arable and horticultural trials
- Campus Frankenforst — animal science experimental station near Königswinter-Vinxel
- Campus Wiesengut — organic farming research station in the Sieg floodplains near Hennef
- Core Facility Klimakammern — 12 plant-growth climate chambers plus flexible greenhouse space
- Center for Earth System Observations and Computational Analysis (CESOC)
- Center of Integrated Dairy Research (CIDRe)
- Bioeconomy Science Center (BioSC)
- Zentrum für Fernerkundung der Landoberfläche (ZFL) — remote sensing, earth observation, and geoinformation modelling

Faculty research feeds directly into two of the University of Bonn's six Transdisciplinary Research Areas (TRAs): Technology and Innovation for a Sustainable Future and Life and Health.

The AEI faculty operates a dedicated International Affairs Office (Servicestelle Internationales) at Katzenburgweg 9, Bonn, staffed by an International Affairs Officer (Dr. Sarah Nischalke) and an Erasmus Coordinator (Antje Svihlik), with open weekly Erasmus+ Zoom office hours every Thursday 10:00–11:30.

Of the University of Bonn's approximately 35,000 students, more than 5,000 are international, contributing to a genuinely international campus atmosphere. The faculty supports inbound and outbound mobility through Erasmus+ partnerships across Europe and a wide range of non-European cooperation agreements.

English-taught Master's programmes — including M.Sc. AFECO, M.Sc. ARTS, M.Sc. Mobile Robotics, M.Sc. Crop Sciences, M.Sc. Geodetic Engineering, and M.Sc. Planetary Health — allow international applicants to study entirely in English without German language proficiency.

For doctoral candidates, the BIGS Land and Food graduate school provides a structured framework for international and interdisciplinary PhD research at the faculty. The faculty also has its own internationalisation strategy aligned with the university-wide strategy, with defined priorities, challenges, and concrete measures for growing international partnerships.

Personnel and faculty mobility under Erasmus+ includes short-term teaching assignments and staff training stays abroad. Incoming international students receive support throughout their stay — covering enrolment, accommodation search, and social integration — through the faculty's International Affairs Office.

The AEI faculty is based in Bonn, a mid-sized university city on the Rhine in western Germany, approximately 30 km south of Cologne/Bonn Airport (CGN) — one of Germany's most connected regional airports — and roughly 25 km from Cologne central station, a major ICE high-speed rail hub.

Beyond the main university campus, the faculty operates three dedicated field and experimental campuses:
- Campus Klein-Altendorf (CKA) — between Rheinbach and Meckenheim; focus on arable, crop, and horticultural field trials, and home to the Kompetenzzentrum Gartenbau (KoGa)
- Campus Frankenforst — on the edge of Königswinter-Vinxel; animal science experimental research
- Campus Wiesengut — in the Sieg floodplains near Hennef; organic farming research

On-campus research infrastructure includes the Core Facility Klimakammern (12 climate-controlled plant growth chambers), a Samples and Vegetation Centre for digital technology trials, and the Service Platform for Plant Experiments. The bio innovation park Rheinland at Campus Klein-Altendorf connects faculty research directly with regional bioeconomy industry actors.

Graduates of the AEI faculty enter a job market where, as the faculty notes, agricultural and food science graduates are in demand like rarely before, driven by skills shortages and demographic change across the sector.

Typical career paths by discipline:
- Agricultural Sciences / Crop Sciences: agri-tech companies, seed and plant breeding firms, agricultural consultancy, sustainability and land use management, international development organisations (FAO, World Bank-linked NGOs)
- Food and Nutritional Sciences / Molecular Food Technology: food industry R&D (product development, quality assurance), public health nutrition, regulatory agencies, food retail and trade
- Agricultural and Food Economics (AFECO / ARTS): agricultural policy at federal and EU level, commodity trading, rural development finance, international agri-business
- Geodesy, Geoinformation, Geodetic Engineering: surveying and mapping authorities, GIS software companies, satellite and remote sensing industry, urban planning, infrastructure engineering
- Mobile Robotics: autonomous systems companies, precision agriculture technology, logistics automation, defence and aerospace
- Planetary Health / Animal Sciences: veterinary and public health institutions, environmental consultancies, One Health policy bodies

The PhenoRob Career Fair (biennial, since 2023) and the Agrarkarrieretag (annual, 10+ years, run with AgroBrain) provide structured employer access. Faculty spin-offs — including Pheno-Inspect, DynamoBot, WeGrow, and AutoDry (EuroTier 2022 Gold Medal, with GEA Farm Technologies) — illustrate the start-up and deep-tech entrepreneurship route supported by the Institut für Entrepreneurship (IES) and the Transfer Center enaCom.