What drives us?

Our group is interested in the characterization of newly identified disease genes and the translation of genetic findings into mechanistic studies. Our overarching aim is to better understand the underlying disease processes to finally define therapeutic targets and design potential clinical treatment approaches. We are a team of complementary expertise and use multidisciplinary approaches with a broad spectrum of techniques. Close interrelationships to patient data and clinical genetics with outstanding sequencing and bioinformatics facilities (www.medgen-mainz.de) are key for our research. For many years we have been at the forefront of genetic diagnostics and were one of the first laboratories that utilized massively parallel sequencing on a larger scale. Complementary strengths of the private sector and academia are a major asset of our group.

What do we offer?

We are highly interested in you as a medical student to join our lab. As you may have already heard from other fellow students, organization and assistance of your doctoral thesis from A-Z is crucial, that means perfect guidance needs to be guaranteed during the practical (wet lab) part of your work, but also while writing down your results and discussing the experiments you did. Support and supervision provided by your hosting institution and laboratory is of utmost importance. Please be reassured that we take our responsibility seriously and offer a one to one support by experienced post-doc researchers in our team. We are happy to provide you with references of previous teammates and medical students who successfully completed their thesis in our lab.

In general, the experimental work (wet lab part) starts in February or September (exceptions might be possible and need to be individually discussed) of each year and requires approximately eight months in our research laboratory with the above described support and supervision At the beginning of each term, our department offers a students training course that provides most helpful insights into various molecular techniques, microscopy and bioinformatics. If you are interested to join our research team and/or would like to receive further information on our current projects, please feel free to send us an email (carsten.bergmann(at)uniklinik-freiburg.de).