Digital Infrastructure for the Life Sciences (DILS)

The graduate school DILS is part of the Bielefeld Institute for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (BIBI). An important goal of the institute, in cooperation with researchers from ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences, the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI), and the CeBiTec, is to establish the new research profile "Service Science in the Life Sciences" on an international level. To this end, young researchers are important for the development and advancement of bioinformatics methods and services.

Genome Bioinformatics

From October 2013 to September 2019 the German-Canadian DFG International Research Training Group Computational Methods for the Analysis of the Diversity and Dynamics of Genomes was funded as a joint graduate program of Bielefeld University and Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada).

Industrial Biotechnology

The state North Rhine-Westphalia together with Bielefeld University, Dortmund University and Düsseldorf University funded a PhD program in Industrial Biotechnology, the CLIB graduate cluster. This unique program started as jointly coordinated collaboration between the three universities in 2009 and the second and final elongation period ended in December 2016. In total, 144 PhD fellowships were granted, some of which are still ongoing. Besides completion of their PhD thesis projects, the 48 CLIB graduates in Bielefeld published 211 scientific publications, filed four patent applications and founded a spin off company.

After the ending of the final elongation period in December 2016, the cluster lives on as PhD study program Industrial Biotechnology offered both by the Technical Faculty and the Faculty of Biology at Bielefeld University. Funded by other sources and pursuing research projects in Industrial Biotechnology, PhD students may enrol in the PhD program Industrial Biotechnology. Their rights and obligations are detailed in the PhD study program and coincide with those of CLIB-GC students. We are looking forward to continue research in Industrial Biotechnology through successful PhD thesis projects.