The program is characterised by a significant share of research lab courses embedded in both basic and applied research of the participating Fraunhofer Institutes of Applied Information Technology (FIT) and for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) , in cooperation with regional industry. Major topics include: biomedical database systems, management and retrieval of information, data mining and machine learning, statistical genetics, computer-aided drug design, chemoinformatics, medical imaging, visualization, computational disease modelling, modelling of molecular networks, algorithmic bioinformatics and systems biology. Special courses and internships on information retrieval and data mining provide a special focus on (or within) the important application domain of biomedical information systems. The program also includes training designed to sensitize students to the ethical implications of emerging biotechnologies.