PhD students pass through an important phase in their career. Here, they get the first taste of “real” science, although a Master degree sometimes gives a feeling of what is coming. PhD students are also important contributors to the science produced in a group or at a department. Furthermore, their active engagement with fellow students in other groups helps in fertilizing the larger environment and communicating across established borders. In Norway, PhD students follow a training programme of a required amount of ECSTs (30) in addition to their research towards a thesis. The ambition of the Molecular and Computational Biology Research School (MCB) is to create an attractive and stimulating training environment for PhD students in molecular and computational biology, both to better serve the needs for relevant training in the field, and to stimulate crossdiscipline developments in the research of the parties. The four parties involved comprise more than 20 research groups in molecular, developmental and computational biology with scientists active at the international level. This is research where the development often is faster than textbooks can absorb. We believe that the strong integration of active scientists with the MCB Research School will help prepare our PhD students for a future career, either as scientists or in other positions of society where knowledge of science is needed. An open-minded, curiosity-driven, problem-penetrating mind is what it takes. Welcome to MCB!

The MCB Board:

Anders Goksøyr, chairman
Inge Jonassen, vice-chairman
Daniel Chourrout
Rein Aasland
Marion Kusche-Gullberg
Gro Elin Bjerga
Harald Barsnes