Biotechnology
Biotechnology is generally acknowledged to be one of the key technologies of the 21st century. Its vast range of applications and the effects it has on other areas of technology make it an extremely powerful factor in boosting the economic development of the country.
With this in mind, the Department of Biotechnology has devised various interdisciplinary courses preparing students for a career in modern biotechnology and the life sciences. Common to all of them is the combination of applicability with intensive research activities in which students are involved at an early stage.
Thanks to the wide range of cooperative agreements with universities and research institutions abroad, the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences is in an excellent position to promote international student exchanges. Many of our undergraduates spend at least one semester studying or engaging in research in other countries. The MSc course in Biotechnology is conducted entirely in English, thus underlining the Department’s international affiliations and taking due account of the international complexion of research and industrial enterprise in the life sciences.
The Hochschule Mannheim was one of the first universities in Germany to offer a biotechnology programme back in 1986. Initially geared to the traditional understanding of the subject as technology with biological material, the courses were extended in the early 1990s to keep pace with scientific progress and to encompass molecular biology, cell biology and genetic engineering. In 2001 a new course in biological chemistry was introduced, concentrating on bioanalysis (including genome and proteome analysis) as a basis for medical diagnostics and the development of active medicinal substances. Graduates of the MSc course in biotechnology have direct access to doctoral study programmes in the framework of a Graduate Research Group (Graduiertenkolleg) run jointly with the University of Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ Heidelberg).
The Biotechnology Department maintains close working relations with world-famous research centres belonging to the so-called Bio-Regio network situated in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (German Cancer Research Centre, EMBL, Max Planck Institutes etc.) and with major companies such as ABBOTT, BASF, Merck and Roche Diagnostics. This ensures a high degree of practical relevance in the study programmes themselves and also provides unbeatable job prospects for our graduates.