Team:Heidelberg/Team/scientific environment

University

The University of Heidelberg, also called Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, is the most ancient university of Germany. The University Heidelberg is one of the leading research university in Europe and is constantly ranked 1st or 2nd nationally. The excellent research is shown by the fact that 30 Nobel Prize laureates are associated with the University Heidelberg. The 12 faculties host over 26.000 students and about 4200 full-time staff members. Associated institutions like the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and several Max-Planck institutes contribute to the excellent scientific reputation.

DKFZ

German Cancer Research Center

How do malignant tumours develop? In Germany, cancer, with over 450,000 new cases diagnosed and 270,000 deaths each year, is one of the most dreaded diseases and the second most frequent cause of death nation-wide. How can they be prevented or at least diagnosed at an early stage and treated more effectively? In recent years, tremendous effort has been invested in the fight against cancer and researchers at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg have achieved major advances both in basic research and in the development of novel methods for clinical application. This has received special recognition in 2008, when Professor Harald zur Hausen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his outstanding scientific contribution to the study of human papillomaviruses (HPV). Cutting-edge research for fighting against this threatening disease is performed here in Heidelberg by over 2000 scientific members, including professional researchers and students. The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers. Besides its multi-faceted research focuses, the german cancer research provides a brilliant platform for scientists of the next generation by offering a Master's program in Cancer Biology in close cooperation with the University of Heidelberg as well as an internatinal Ph.D. program called the Helmholtz International Graduate School for Cancer Research.

BioQuant

The Bioquant is part of the University of Heidelberg and integrates groups from different disciplines to help them focus on their research tasks.

Quantitative analyzes of biological processes is one of the important tasks that medicine and biology face in the post-genomic era. Those analyzes are very useful to understand fundamental mechanisms and their development and especially to get insights into disturbance and regulation of biological processes. In the medicine it will lead to improved diagnoses as well as therapys. It might also help to prevent new diseases from developing. Besides experimental accumulation of biological data and their analysis with bioinformatics, it is important to model and simulate these processes, primarily to validate experiments. The improvement of those methods and their expansion to more complex systems is the goal of Bioquant's research teams.

BioRegion RN

<imagemap> Image:HD09_BioRN.jpg|center|BioRegion Rhein-Neckar. Click on the triangle in the picture to see the enlarged map.|450px|thumb rect 150 400 200 470[http://igem.bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de/mediawiki/index.php/Team/scientific_environment/BioRNMap BioRegion Rhein-Neckar] desc bottom-left </imagemap>

High-perfomance industry and a lot of outstanding research institutions

BioRegion Rhein-Neckar is one of Germany’s leading clusters and contains areas of three German States: Rheinland-Pfalz, Baden-Württemberg and Hessen. This cluster defines a combination of medicine, biotechnology and fundamental research to build up a major scientific and industrial region in Europe. Many important academic and industrial facilities are members of the BioRegion Rhein-Neckar (see member list). This region concentrates elite research in the range of molecular biology and molecular medicine. The University of Heidelberg, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research are part of this scientific excellence. This is supplemented by the University of Mannheim and Kaiserslautern. Besides, the cities of Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim present an important industrial conurbation with key aspects of chemical industry and electrical and mechanical engineering. These include the companies Roche Diagnostics, BASF, Abbott, Merck, Baxter and Aventis Pasteur. The software company SAP and the financial service provider MLP are essential members of the service sector.