Computational Biology und Bioinformatik analysieren lebende Systeme mit Methoden der Informatik. Das Seminar kombiniert Präsentationen von Studierenden und Forschenden, um das sich schnell entwickelnde Gebiet aus der Informatikperspektive zu skizzieren. Themenbereiche sind Sequenzanalyse, Proteomics, Optimierung und Bio-inspired computing, Systemmodellierung, -simulation und -analyse.

The organization and functioning of academic research as well as academic publishing are introduced and applied: students critically review two term papers written by their student colleagues. Based on the reviews, the authors of the papers write reply letters and revise their own term papers. They finally present their topic during an in-house "mini-conference" with a talk.

Individual writing of an essay-type review paper about a specialized topic in the field of ecology and evolution, based on substantial reading of original literature and discussions with a senior scientist.

Students are introduced to a typical data science workflow using various examples from environmental systems. They learn common methods and key aspects for each step through practical application. The course enables students to plan their own data science project in their specialization and to acquire more domain-specific methods independently or in further courses.

Students are introduced to advanced data science where environmental data are analyzed using state of the art machine learning methods. Starting from known statistical approaches, they learn the principle of more advanced machine learning methods with practical application. The course enables students to plan their own data science project in their specialization and to apply machine learning mode

Students critically engage with literature from the rapidly expanding field of experimental evolution, examining diverse evolutionary questions across model systems and methods. Through reading, presentation, and discussion, they develop analytical, evaluative, and communication skills for designing and interpreting experiments.