Evolutionary Biology

Next deadline for the submission of proposals relating to the support of postdocs: April 15, 2011.

The origin and development of the diversity of species represents one of the greatest challenges to fundamental research in the whole field of biology. The basic concepts like adaptation or selection are universal and applicable to many different systems, making evolutionary biology the core of a new integrative biology thereby lending fundamental orientation to the modern biosciences. The field has gained new topicality in the genome era, since the sequencing of the genome of many species opens up new windows on a number of issues which have been subject of investigation for a long time.

With this funding initiative the Foundation aims at strengthening the field of evolutionary biology in Germany by generating impulses for both research and higher education. The major goal is to anchor the concepts of evolutionary biology in university teaching more firmly, to create attractive career prospects for junior scientists as well as to promote their interaction on a European level.

In principle, funding is open to all departments related to the topic. Within the initiative, funding is currently availabe for postdocs. Support for PhD students is no longer available. Research projects will only be funded in the framework of the support for young academics. Furthermore, funding is available for symposia and summer schools. For further information on the initiative  "Evolutionary Biology", please refer to the Information for Applicants on the right.

Darwin Year

The british University of Cambridge has put almost all texts of Charles Darwin online. At Darwin Online you can access about 20,000 documents for free. The site also shows notes of the researcher, photographies and private writings.

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