Translational Neuroscience

The Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “Translation­al Neu­rosci­ence” has its basis on estab­lished syner­gies be­tween basic re­search and clini­cal prac­tice in­volving the facul­ties of medi­cine and human sci­ences at the Uni­versity of Würz­burg. The stu­dents are trained to under­stand the com­plexi­ties of neuro­logical and neuro­psy­chiat­ric disor­ders, to devel­op new ideas and inno­vative meth­odo­logical ap­proaches essen­tial for break­throughs in under­stand­ing these dis­eases, as well as for diag­nostic and thera­peutic devel­op­ments.

The Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram "Translation­al Neu­rosci­ence" is a re­search-orient­ed, inter­disci­plinary train­ing pro­gram in Eng­lish ad­dress­ing na­tional and inter­na­tional stu­dents with a Bachelor’s degree in bi­ology, bio­chem­istry or in other life sci­ence stud­ies or in psy­cholo­gy and stu­dents after their first sec­tion of the medi­cal exam­ination in the field of human medi­cine. The study pro­gram teach­es a didac­tically coor­dinat­ed con­cept of mo­lecular and cell bio­logi­cally orient­ed basic re­search on dis­ease mech­anisms, ge­netic diag­nos­tics, clini­cal diag­nos­tics, psy­cho­logical testing proce­dures, and of new imag­ing diag­nostic tech­niques such as MRI, PET and OCT. The stu­dents are trained for a pa­tient-centred neuro­scien­tific re­search at the inter­face of previ­ously sepa­rate fields of neuro­biolo­gy, neu­rolo­gy, bi­opsy­cholo­gy and psy­chia­try.

An in­divid­ual men­toring pro­gram inten­sively sup­ports the stu­dents who face high per­for­mance expec­tations during their stud­ies. An inten­sive con­tact with lectur­ers is essen­tial for coping with the in­creased de­mands of the pro­gram and helps stu­dents during their career path­find­ing. This net­work ena­bles guid­ance and posi­tion­ing of stu­dents indi­vidu­ally ac­cord­ing to their re­search inter­ests and strengths in neuro­sci­ence. A tu­toring pro­gram among the stu­dents com­pletes the net­work­ing.

Due to the inter­disci­plinary train­ing at the inter­face be­tween neuro­biolo­gy and the clini­cal sub­jects of neu­rology and psy­chia­try/psycholo­gy, the study pro­gram quali­fies the stu­dents for PhD pro­grams as well as for a di­rect entry into the job mar­ket. Grad­uates of the elite study pro­gram Trans­lation­al Neu­rosci­ence have per­spec­tives on em­ploy­ment at na­tional and inter­na­tional level, for exam­ple in public re­search insti­tu­tions, in the teach­ing field, in re­search-orient­ed clinics, in the field of mo­lecular and diag­nostic imag­ing, in the phar­maceutical indus­try, as well as in ad­visory insti­tutions for drug regula­tions.