The International Max Planck Research School for Computational Biology and Scientific Computing is a joint graduate program of the Freie Universität Berlin (FU) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG). Building upon the existing MSc courses in bioinformatics and scientific computing, students have the opportunity to attend lectures while working on their PhD research. Courses, seminars and joint research work shall foster the establishment of a close-knit community of graduate students where scientific experience and knowledge is exchanged.

The research focus of the IMPRS-CBSC is on the mathematical and computational side of research in sequence analysis, theoretical structural biology, computational chemistry and drug design, molecular evolution, genome analysis and data analysis methods in functional genomics. Experimental research and laboratory courses in these areas is not part of the IMPRS-CBSC, although the graduate school will be surrounded by experimental research, and theoretical courses in biological areas will be offered.

PhD students are required to gain a certain number of credit points from scientific courses, transferable skills (or soft skills) courses and tutoring work during their time in the IMPRS-CBSC.