Integrated Life Science (ILS)

If in addition to your talent for physics and/or mathematics you also have a special interest in biology, the interdisciplinary course of study “Integrated Life Sciences – Biology, biomathematics, and biophysics” (ILS) provides a unique course of study in Germany: an education that explores the intersection between biology, mathematics, and biophysics.

This course explores many questions in modern biology (for example, the dependency of the function of cells on its composition, structure, and dynamics; the function of cellular proteins, their sequence or the biological membranes of the cell; design of proteins in the laboratory or on the computer.) The understanding of other natural sciences is required for this course. The enormous amounts of data from DNA sequencing projects can only be evaluated by means of sophisticated mathematical algorithms. This can be used, for example, to investigate the evolution of cells or organisms. Also, new optical procedures in physics enable the investigation of biological macromolecules. Therefore, the classical biological knowledge alone is not enough to answer the current questions in modern biology. To work with biological quantitative processes, modern scientific procedures encompass much more material from other branches of the natural sciences and from mathematics.

ILS is designed such that the necessary technical knowledge of biology, mathematics, and physics gives the multidisciplinary content intersecting biology in integrated modules. These include areas such as microscopy and optics, bioinformatics and systems biology, as well as biophysics and structural biology. In this approach, the language from other natural sciences will be understandable and the extensive knowledge in interdisciplinary work areas can be introduced.

Further information about the course of study can be founded under meinStudium or on the biology website.