Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine (SGBM)

The "Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine (SGBM)" offers a dynamic interdisciplinary training program that prepares students for future scientific challenges. Its ultimate goal is to create a top notch "Life Scientist of the Future" who can assimilate knowledge and techniques from various disciplines as well as combine basic with translational research, biotechnology and drug development. In order to achieve this goal SGBM follows four major strategies:

• it relies on existing research and teaching programs in life sciences and interdisciplinary courses in "Novel Technologies" and "Soft Skills"
• it has implemented an MD/PhD program which allows medical doctors to perform a PhD on projects at the interface of basic and translational research
• an exchange program allows the best doctoral students to participate in research and teaching activities at partner universities abroad
• doctoral students perform their research bearing in mind the DFG guidelines related to good scientific practice.

Our graduate school is built on superb research and teaching programs in Protein Structure and Function, Synthetic Biology and Signalling, Developmental Biology, Neurosciences, Immunology and Virology, Molecular Medicine and Molecular Plant Sciences. It has been established in close collaboration with several Research Training Groups (RTGs), an International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS), Collaborative Research Centres (CRCs) and the Bernstein Centre Freiburg (BCF). These training groups and research centers are led by internationally renowned scientists who are members of our graduate school. Doctoral students work in a high-profile research environment and attend lectures, seminars, workshops, symposia, regional meetings and annual retreats. The entire program is run in English. Furthermore, many SGBM members are also participating in the Clusters of Excellence CIBSS (Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies), BIOSS (Centre for Biological Signalling Studies) and BL-BT (BrainLinks-BrainTools). SGBM, BIOSS and BrainLinks-BrainTools are very generously funded by the German Research Foundation as part of the Excellence Initiative.

The University of Freiburg has a longstanding tradition in excellence and several Nobel laureates have been associated with this university as can be seen in the brochure.