The Institute of Computational Life Sciences (ICLS) performs research and teaches in interdisciplinary fields where digitalisation intersects with the life sciences, addressing complex problems and developing new solutions in the key areas of health, society, the environment and nutrition.

We see our team of 58 employees with extensive experience in a range of interdisciplinary projects as a bridge between basic university research and practical applications in business and society.

Our research and development projects fully consider the context of our business and research partners, focusing on the fields of computational health, bioinformatics, cognitive computing for the life sciences, digital labs and production. Valuable knowledge from these projects is then directly integrated into our teaching activities, further benefiting our students.

The Bachelor's programme Applied Digital Life Sciences is characterised by the application-oriented training in the field of data science and computation as well as by its foundation in the life sciences with the fields of biology, environment, biotechnology, chemistry, food technology and health. The practice-oriented education concept with the specialisations "Digital Labs and Production", "Digital Environment" and "Digital Health" offers a lot of freedom for the individual design of the study programme.

Digitalisation is changing all areas of life and work at an increasing pace. The disciplines of the life sciences are strongly affected by this. Particularly at the interfaces of biology/biotechnology, chemistry and medicine, ever larger amounts of data are being generated and need to be processed. More and more research questions are being addressed in silico. Digital technologies and computer-aided methods complement the established methods of the life sciences in vitro and in vivo. In this Master's programme, you will acquire expertise in dealing with digital tools and large amounts of data. The programme will prepare you with relevant skills for the digital future.

The Centre for Bioinformatics focuses on the theoretical and computational aspects of modelling the molecular biology processes, genome evolution and adaptive change, as well as biomedical data representation and integration.  The goal is to bring basic research and new bioinformatics methods to real-world applications, ranging, for example, from biotechnology and forensics to biomedical research and environmental applications. The research area is represented by the several research groups, each focusing on certain methods or application domains.

The Centre for Cognitive Computing for Life Sciences deals with the development and use of computational methods and models for the field of life sciences, whose properties are inspired by the learning and adaptive abilities as well as self-organisation principles of natural systems. The solutions developed support demanding human activities and decision-making processes or can be used for process automation. The following general aspects are central to our research and development: learning ability/adaptability of the systems, context-bound solutions (application context in the life sciences), systemic consideration of the application and the context.

The centre Computational Health addresses fundamental questions in biology and medicine using computer-assisted, data-driven methods. Important tools are machine learning for image and signal analysis, parameter estimation for differential equation systems and multiphysics simulation. Effective validation strategies are used to deal with the unknown.

The centre combines specific methodological and technological expertise in the digitization and virtualization of laboratories, processes and production facilities in the life sciences. This includes, on the one hand, the networking of devices, processes and people using interfaces, data pipelines and data management and, on the other hand, the mapping of physical systems and infrastructures to models and simulation environments. Digital twins are a good example of how these topics interact.