The Research School in Molecular and Computational Biology (MCB) was established by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science of the University of Bergen in 2006 to create an attractive and stimulating training environment for doctoral students in molecular and computational biology, with a strong association to research in this field at the international level.

MCB is a collaboration between the Faculty’s Department of Molecular Biology (MBI), and Department of Informatics (II), the Computational Biology Unit (CBU) at the Bergen Center for Computational Science, and the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology. The latter two are research centres under the Unifob research organization. Since 2007, MCB also includes the Department of Biomedicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

The co-localization of strong and complementary research programmes in molecular and computational biology forms an excellent environment for training of PhD students in both disciplines, both in terms of competence, resources and size. There are currently approx. 50 PhD students registered in the PhD programmes at II and MBI. The aim is that more than 20 PhD students will graduate from MCB every year, and that MCB will foster an increased collaboration between units and disciplines.

MCB will develop a course programme that offers the students both core competence in both disciplines, and opportunities for specialization in selected topics. The MCB course programme will also cover the basic topics in science theory and ethics, and scientific communication in a discipline-oriented approach, compulsory components of all the Faculty’s PhD programmes.