International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular, and Molecular Microbiology (IMPRS-Mic)
The International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology (IMPRS-MIC) is a graduate school leading to a Ph.D. degree. The school is a joint initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and the Philipps-Universität Marburg. The school aims to provide students with outstanding and interdisciplinary scientific training in modern microbiology.
The school aims to attract young scientists with outstanding qualification from Germany and abroad with a master or diploma degree.
The ambition of the School is to provide the students with a molecular understanding of the cellular processes that allow microbes to compete, adapt and differentiate in their natural environments. Reaching this understanding depends on the integration of environmental, cellular and molecular aspects of microbiology. Research areas covered include:
- biogeochemistry
- cellular and molecular microbiology
- microbial biochemistry
- modeling
- molecular ecology
- parasitology
- plant-microbe interactions
The microorganisms represented include viruses, bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa and microalgae.
The three-year Ph.D. programme connects and broadens the topics of individual PhD theses via joint seminars, colloquia, workshops and courses. An important goal of these activities is to promote interactions between researchers from different fields of microbiology knowing that the new is often discovered by interdisciplinary approaches. The official language of the school is English.