National and International Networks

At a regional level, there are close contacts with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Association of Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt. In the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) Leading-Edge Cluster competition, Heidelberg was one of five first round winners with the project "BioRN - the Biotechnology Cluster Cell Based Molecular Medicine in the metropolitan region Rhine-Neckar. The focus of the cluster is the development of bio-pharmaceutical products from the early phase to industrial maturity. At a national level there is close interlinking with several German universities and research centres. Furthermore, researchers from the Faculty of Biosciences are involved in several DFG Priority Programmes and BMBF and Helmholtz projects.

Internationally, the Heidelberg bioscientists are participating in numerous EU projects, including the Marie Curie Training Network, and a National Institute of Health (USA) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (USA) research centre. There are close research cooperations with renowned research establishments in the USA, Japan, England and other European countries. There are also a number of cooperations with industry. These include projects with firms such as Roche, Merck,BASF, and SAP along with over 30 biotechnology businesses. In the field of active substance research, there are collaborations with Abbott Laboratories, Bayer-Schering, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Novartis, Merck and Schwabe. As part of the Industry on campus project, there are cooperations with Nikon Instruments (Nikon Imaging Center), Hammamatsu, Leica and Olympus.