Workshops and Practical Courses

Microsystems for Biological and Medical Application
Bioreactor technology is vital for tissue engineering. Usually, bioreactors are used to provide a tissue-specific physiological in vitro environment during tissue maturation. In addition to this most obvious application, bioreactors have the potential to improve the overall efficiency of the tissue-engineering concept. To date, a variety of bioreactor systems for tissue-specific applications have been developed. With bioreactor technology, various functional tissues of different types have been generated and cultured in vitro. In a 5-days course, we will introduce the participants into the principles of the different bioreactors and train them in the possible applications of bioreactor systems within a tissue-engineering process. Moreover, the use of bioreactor systems for the expansion of clinically relevant cell types will be addressed. Finally, bioreactor technology will be reviewed in the context of commercial constraints.

Hands-on-Training “RNA-seq data analysis”
This is a 2-3 day course which aims to introduce the graduate students to current methods for the analysis of high-throughput RNA-seq data based on deep sequencing. The course will be based on pre-existing data sets and covers topics ranging from quality analysis of deep sequencing data, mapping of cDNA reads to reference genomes, visualization of RNA-seq data, to gene expression analysis. The course will not require any bioinformatics skills but rather aims to introduce the students into how to handle output and analyze data generated by existing analysis tools.

Additional courses
The course on “Superresolution Microscopy” will be organized by the Chair of Biotechnology and Biophysics, “Biocomputing” by the Chair of Bioinformatics (in future this will be done by the newly established Center of Computational and Theoretical Biology (CCTB), “Cell Culture” by the Chair of Cell and Developmental Biology, and “Metabolomics and Systems Biology” by the Metabolomics Core Unit of the Biocenter together with the Chair of Bioinformatics. In addition there are several regular study courses of the Master Programs covering all topics of the GRK which might be selected by the thesis committee for individual graduate students if required.