Vienna Biocenter Doctoral School
The PhD Program in Life Sciences at the Vienna Biocenter (VBC) has been running successfully since 1993, educating students from all around the world and involving them in cutting-edge molecular biology research. The program brings together researchers and students from the University of Vienna (UW), the Medical University of Vienna (MUW), the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), all located at the VBC campus. It is one of the oldest and, currently, one of the largest PhD programs in molecular biology in all of Europe, with 91 research groups participating.
The highly international and collaborative VBC community hosts approximately 1,500 scientists (including 220 PhD students) from over 70 countries. With around 350 published scientific articles a year, VBC ranks as the number 1 life sciences hub in Austria (Nature Index). VBC scientists cover an extremely wide range of modern molecular biology research topics and have over the years made a number of broadly recognized major advances. To name just two, both CRISPR and organoid revolutions, without which modern biology landscape could not be imagined, had their roots on the VBC campus. The remarkable productivity and the high quality of scientific output is exemplified in numerous grants and awards: 51 ERC research grants, 24 EMBO Members, 11 Wittgenstein Awards (the most highly endowed science award in Austria) and 2 Breakthrough Prizes.
