New Study Programme in Molecular Biosystems Beginning in the Winter Semester 2015/16
29.04.2015 -
A new Master’s programme in Molecular Biosystems is being implemented for the winter semester 2015/16 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
The for the most part interdisciplinarily designed four-semester course of study is being jointly offered by the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Faculty of Process and Systems Engineering. Additionally, mathematics and computer sciences faculties, as well as the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering are engaged in the programme.
Molecular Biosystems is intended for Bachelor students coming from biology and related areas of study, who are interested in the quantitative and systems oriented issues of systems biology and want to acquire the corresponding experimental and theoretical methods.
Biological systems are organizationally extremely complex, as well as being highly regulated and therefore not yet well understood in terms of their operations. A deeper understanding of these systems is very important not only in modern biotechnology; most diseases are ultimately also associated with dysregulation of cellular control or signal processing at the molecular level.
The programme Molecular Biosystems at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg aims to provide a thorough understanding of complex biological processes and their dynamics and regulatory mechanisms at the system level. To this end, concerted knowledge in biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as in systems biology, regulation biology, bioinformatics and systems theory are taught. In the Molecular Biosystems study programme, both the research and the quantitative description, as well as the foundations for targeted modification of the structure, function and dynamics of complex biological systems will be learned. Here, molecular and cellular mechanisms will receive special attention. In addition to biological-experimental work, this requires the creation and analysis of mathematical models of the biological systems. Findings and hypotheses of modeling and simulation are used in an often iterative process to design new experiments, while verified in further experiments.
Bachelor graduates in biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, or molecular biotechnology show a high interest for extended studies in systems oriented areas of molecular biology. Unlike students of process engineering or systems theory, however, they oftentimes lack the mathematical tools to qualify for these fields. Therefore, the Molecular Biosystems programme was developed, in order to enable a systems oriented education in molecular biology, thus adding systems oriented expertise to research and industrial sectors of life sciences. The programme’s graduates will find careers in fundamental research in biology, medicine, and pharmacy, in applied research in pharmaceutical, medical technological, and biotechnological industrial enterprises, as well as in administration and planning in industry, specialised authorities, and research facilities.
In the Master’s programme Molecular Biosystems, instruction is focused on biological science disciplines and, depending on the chosen concentration, multi-disciplinarily focused on issues concerning systems theory, biotechnology, and molecular biology. Building upon existing fundamental mathematical knowledge, the understanding of systems theory will be expanded in a specific manner. With such, skills will be developed, which enable the abstraction and formulation of complex problems from either a new or developing area, in order to find new paths in understanding complex molecular biosystems.
With the establishment of the Molecular Biosystems programme in Magdeburg, the rising demand for systems oriented molecular biology expertise in life sciences and biotechnology can be more readily met and the associated university level education is made available in Saxony-Anhalt and central Germany.