- Degree
- Doctoral candidates enrolled at the Department of Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacy at Freie Universität Berlin can choose between the academic title Doktor der Naturwissenschaften (doctor rerum naturalium, abbreviated to Dr rer nat) or the academic title PhD. The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science confers the academic degree of Dr rer nat. Alternatively, women can be awarded the academic degree of Doktorin der Naturwissenschaften (gendered academic title) in both departments.
- Doctoral degree or degree awarded by
- Freie Universität Berlin
- Course location
- Berlin
- In cooperation with
- Freie Universität Berlin
- Teaching language
- • English
- Languages
- Some courses at Bachelor's level may be held in German, but these courses are not mandatory.
- Full-time / part-time
- • full-time
- Programme duration
- 6 semesters
- Beginning
- Only for doctoral programmes: any time
- Additional information on beginning, duration and mode of study
- We would like all new doctoral candidates to attend a Welcome Week in November 2026. This means that in most cases, your degree should be granted by October 2026. Exceptions may be possible.
- Application deadline
- • The deadline for candidates to submit written applications is 7 January 2026 (6pm CET).
• The deadline for referees to submit reference letters is 14 January 2026 (6pm CET).
Please check our website https://www.molgen.mpg.de/IMPRS/application (https://www.molgen.mpg.de/IMPRS/application) for more details.
- Tuition fees per semester in EUR
- None
- Combined Master's degree / PhD programme
- Yes
- Joint degree / double degree programme
- No
- Description/content
- The International Max Planck Research School for Biology and Computation is a cooperation between Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) (departments of Mathematics and Computer Science as well as Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacy) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG). Courses, seminars and joint research work foster the establishment of a close-knit community of doctoral candidates where scientific experience and knowledge is exchanged.
The topic of the IMPRS reflects the development of molecular genetics into an information science, based on the plethora of experimental data that are nowadays available and steadily being produced about cellular processes. This has created a need to offer doctoral candidates a broad education and experience in both experimental molecular biology and data analysis, with possible specialisations in genomic and molecular biology techniques as well as in algorithms, statistics and artificial intelligence for molecular genetics. Importantly, mastery of the experimental and theoretical aspects shall equip doctoral candidates to plan experiments and analysis jointly rather than producing data which are then passed on for analysis.
The research at MPIMG and the participating FUB departments can roughly be assigned to the topics of gene regulation, development and cellular differentiation, chromatin biology and epigenetics, RNA biology, computational biology, and genome analysis. All these topics by their very nature depend strongly on the connection between experimental and computational work.