The Graduate Research School in Integrative Biology (IBIO) offers a collaborative, inclusive and interdisciplinary environment for PhD students and researchers. Our courses and meetings provide valuable networking opportunities and an avenue for connecting with other PhD students at a similar career stage. We aim to actively promote a sense of community within and between each cohort of students. 

Courses

We provide courses in cutting-edge techniques and approaches for generating and working with large and complex biological datasets. We offer training for PhD students using state-of-the-art facilities and technology within the following themes:

• Genomics, paleogenomics, population genetics, and micro-/macroevolution
• Gene expression and translation
• Protein structure, function and evolution
• Molecular and physiological function of genes and proteins (functional genomics)
• The genetics of traits with a focus on morphology, immunology, physiology, behaviour, and ultimately fitness (genomics, transcriptomics and phenomics)
• Gene-by-gene and gene-by-environment interactions
• Epigenetic and phenotypic variation within and between species

Scientific Meetings

In addition to courses, we arrange several scientific meetings each year, providing valuable opportunities to network with a diverse community of ecologists, evolutionary biologists, molecular and structural biologists, bioinformaticians, and statisticians. These scientific meetings take the form of: 

• An introductory meeting for newly enrolled students: A half-day ‘kick-off’ meeting where the latest cohort of students get to meet one another and receive an introduction to the research school and the topics it covers.
• Annual meetings: Full-day conferences with exciting research presentations from top national and international researchers at the forefront of their fields as well as PhD student talks and posters. These conferences have different themes each year but always focus on applying state-of-the-art methodologies and newly developed biotechnologies.
• Research seminars: Half-day seminars on specialist research topics. These meetings include talks from one to two invited speakers and PhD student talks.
• Expert careers talks: Talks from industry and company representatives to discuss career paths outside the academia.