View PhD Programs in Biology in Europe 2019

The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits was established in 2011 and offers around ten fully-paid positions every year for talented students holding a relevant Masters or Bachelors as their highest degree to perform research resulting in a Ph.D. The program is taught in English.

We offer a multidisciplinary program to excellent doctoral students with backgrounds in neuroscience, mathematics, physics, computer science, (bio) chemistry, biology, and medicine as well as research experience in the participating institutions of the Frankfurt Neuroscience community. Students will participate in a tailor-made educational program including research rotations and neuroscience courses but also in training in transferable skills as well as retreats, conferences and summer schools and lecture series. A special fast-track option is offered to students with a Bachelor’s as their highest degree.... [-]

As Europe’s only intergovernmental research organization in the life sciences and as a leading laboratory in molecular biology, EMBL is dedicated to promoting excellence in the molecular life sciences throughout Europe. One of the best ways to achieve this goal is by inspiring and fostering talented young scientists to turn them into skilled and creative future leaders.

The EMBL International Ph.D. Programme is Europe’s ‘best in class’ Ph.D. programme for the life sciences. 240 students from over 40 countries are carrying out Ph.D. research at EMBL at any time. Every year we admit an average of 60 new students, who belong to the top science graduates in their countries. They are carefully selected from a large multi-national pool of applicants that reached over 1700 applications in 2012.... [-]

The Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at SISSA aims at providing students with the fundamental knowledge and skills for conducting cutting-edge research in the field, covering topics as diverse as perception, language, memory, action, and social behavior. Some of our research is also translational in nature (e.g., cognitive neuropsychology), thus offering the opportunity for a career outside academia.

The School is strongly research oriented. Our faculty dedicates most of their time to research, thus offering exceptional tutorship. This substantial investment in research is reflected in our ability to attract highly competitive funding (there are five on-going ERC grants in the group, several Human Frontier projects, and so on); develop strong research ties, both locally (e.g., the Healthcare system of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, the Unione Italiana Ciechi, the University of Trieste) and internationally (e.g., NTNU, Harvard, Oxford); and publish in leading journals such as Current Biology, PNAS, Science, and Nature.... [-]

The Ph.D. Course in Structural and Functional Genomics main mission is the training of enthusiastic young scientists focusing their interests in a broad spectrum of biological research disciplines.

Projects within the Ph.D. Course Program span from genomics, transcriptomics and developmental genetics to structural biology, molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and developmental neurobiology. Crossing over research such as system biology may have a prominent role within the Ph.D. Course Program. Students are continuously exposed to cutting-edge research through year around classes, seminars, and workshops. The average ratio between supervisor and students is about 1 to 5.... [-]

The aim of the Lectures of the Ph.D. program in Neurobiology is to provide students with a common framework starting from different backgrounds.

Lectures will take place at the beginning of the Ph.D. Program, so to have more time to focus on the scientific research project that will be carried out during the Ph.D. There will be two main scientific modules complemented by a module dedicated to specific experimental methodologies and safety procedures. All the lectures will be in English and will be held by an expert in the field.

Module 1 will be devoted to fundamental aspects of Neurophysiology and Neurobiology: we will review basic notions about neurons, synapses and sensory systems. We will also cover properties of neuronal networks underlying perception in the cortex and locomotion in the spinal cord.... [-]

Understanding the working principles of living organisms and soft matter systems from the basic equations ruling the dynamics of atoms and molecules was considered science fiction until a few years ago, and biophysics was almost unanimously considered a battlefield for phenomenologists. Nowadays, applying rigorous physics to biological processes is no longer a dream. What’s more, it is becoming clear that the next few decades will be the golden age for the “theory of life”, which is expected to undergo the same accelerating growth experienced by other physics disciplines in the past century.

Young scientists attracted by the opportunity to develop and apply concepts, models and methods to explore the still uncharted territory of quantitative biology can take up this challenge in our Ph.D. programme in Physics and Chemistry of Biological Systems.... [-]

The Programme PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology Is an official university degree that addresses training in fundamental molecular and cellular biological research. It has the collaboration of the Institute of Biomedical Research of A Coruña (INIBIC).

Its objective is to train in methodological and instrumental skills to be able to develop research projects in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Microbiology, Plant Physiology and Biomedicine.

The program offers quality teaching, personalized and integrated in consolidated research groups. It has also recognized national and international prestige.

Faculty of Science, Charles University belongs to the leading research institutions in the Czech Republic. We are proud of our rich history and the number of famous scientists who have worked here (including the Nobel prize laureates Einstein and Heyrovsky). The members of our research groups are authors or co-authors of hundreds of publications in the most prestigious journals including Nature and Science. Do you want to contribute to new discoveries in science? Join us in the STARS program!

prof. RNDr. Jiri Zima, CSc., Dean

All PhD students receive a state-guaranteed scholarship of 10.500,- Czech crowns per month in their first year of study; the scholarship increases slightly (10.500,- + additional 2.000,- once the doctor examination is successfully passed) over the course of 4 years for which it is granted. In addition to the state scholarship, the STARS program students will also be granted the STARS-scholarship of at least 10.000 CZK per month. The STARS-scholarship is guaranteed for 4-year study period for those students, who will obtain grade "A" (excellent) in a regular each-year evaluation.... [-]

A specialist in the area of life's origins and evolution. The student will receive a broad theoretical and methodical training oriented towards epistemology and theory in Biosciences. This erudition is supplemented by student's special training in some particular area(s) of biology - thereby qualifying her/him for the work in a broad spectrum of research, e.g. theoretical biology, mathematical biology and modeling, history of science, and last but not least, standard experimental biology.

The entrance exam is a one-round in the form of an interview. Based on a written request submitted electronically together with the application but no later than by 19 May 2019, the Dean may permit the entrance examination to take place via information and communication technology, but only for serious and documented reasons such as health or study abroad.... [-]

The subjects applied specific molecular approaches in the detailed exploration of the heredity and variability of organisms the uncovering of the structural and functional relations between information macromolecules (nucleic acids and proteins) as the basis of the existence and manifestation/expression of living matter at all levels of complexity of its organization. It is concerned with the structure and function of genes, the biosynthesis of proteins as gene products – gene expression and its regulation. Classical and molecular biological approaches are applied to all biological objects in normal and pathological states with the aim of discovering, understanding and purposefully modifying the mechanisms of all their manifestations, including the viral level and gene therapy.... [-]

The program is opened to students who finished the graduate study (master, MSc., mgr.) in biology and wish to continue their professional career in zoology. The participants are instructed in conceptual, methodical and technical issues of particular disciplines of zoology and trained in the practical investigation of particular scientific problems. The Ph.D. study is centered with the Ph.D. project which concept and actual performance are largely subjected to student's personal initiative and skills.

A broad spectrum of problems in animal systematics, phylogenetics, ecology and behavioral biology can be studied typically with a routine application of various modern methods and approaches (molecular phylogenetics and phylogeography, histochemical analyses, experimental morphology and evo-devo, quantitative behavioral analyses, neuroethology, acoustic biology etc.) combined with extensive field investigation, comparative studies and laboratory analyses. Almost all major groups of animals are covered, typically Acarina, Aranea, Psedoscorpionea, Mollusca, Heteroptera, Coleoptera, Diptera and several other groups of insects (including fossils) and all major clades of vertebrates (including fossils) as well. For current examples consult a list of the past and recent projects undertaken in the frame of the Ph.D. Program in Zoology (at the web page of the Program: web.natur.cuni.cz/zoologie).... [-]

A specialist in the area of life's origins and evolution. The student will receive a broad theoretical and methodical training oriented towards epistemology and theory in Biosciences. This erudition is supplemented by student's special training in some particular area(s) of biology - thereby qualifying her/him for the work in a broad spectrum of research, e.g. theoretical biology, mathematical biology and modeling, history of science, and last but not least, standard experimental biology.

The entrance exam is a one-round in the form of an interview. Based on a written request submitted electronically together with the application but no later than by 19 May 2019, the Dean may permit the entrance examination to take place via information and communication technology, but only for serious and documented reasons such as health or study abroad.... [-]

Studies are focused on the knowledge of the biological processes occurring in the microorganisms at the molecular, cellular and ecosystems level of organizations. Graduates are accomplished in the skill of independent research and scientific work in microbiology.

The entrance exam is a one-round in the form of an interview. Based on a written request submitted electronically together with the application but no later than by 19 May 2019, the Dean may permit the entrance examination to take place via information and communication technology, but only for serious and documented reasons such as health or study abroad.

During the entrance examination, the candidate must demonstrate the technical and linguistic skills to study the given program, along with attributes necessary for scientific work. The examination is graded with a maximum of 100 points, of which 30 points are awarded as a bonus for giving a more specific idea of the study content and planned dissertation work in the voluntary application appendix, including the dissertation topic, a brief annotation, the anticipated supervising department and the consent of a specific supervisor to supervise such doctoral project.... [-]

The subjects applied specific molecular approaches in the detailed exploration of the heredity and variability of organisms the uncovering of the structural and functional relations between information macromolecules (nucleic acids and proteins) as the basis of the existence and manifestation/expression of living matter at all levels of complexity of its organization. It is concerned with the structure and function of genes, the biosynthesis of proteins as gene products – gene expression and its regulation.

Classical and molecular biological approaches are applied to all biological objects in normal and pathological states with the aim of discovering, understanding and purposefully modifying the mechanisms of all their manifestations, including the viral level and gene therapy. Their subject of study and methods mean that these disciplines have an impact on practically all the scientific and research fields of biology and biomedicine and have an influence on the applied spheres of medicine (congenital and infectious diseases, vaccines, new drugs), agriculture (transgenic organisms and the improvement plants and animals), ecology (the relationship between organisms and the environment, control of pollution of the environment and non-traditional processing of wastes) and biotechnologies based primarily on the procedures of genetic engineering and genetic manipulation.... [-]

The discipline is focused on physical anthropology and human biology, genetics, ecology, and ethology. It deals predominantly with ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of man, morphological variability and evolution of populations, ethnic anthropology and ethnology, human growth and its disorders, body composition and nutrition, the action of environmental and social factors on man, human behavior and with characteristics at various levels of the biologic organization and their heredity. Molecular genetics includes analyses of different human receptor genes and genetic polymorphisms in variable regions of human chromosomes. Applied specialties include forensic, functional, clinical and industrial anthropology. Special position occupies skeletal and dental anthropology.... [-]