Biology and Geography

Research at the Faculty of Biology addresses three main areas: medical biology, water and ecosystems, and empirical research into teaching and learning biology. The groups working in these areas cooperate with the three corresponding ­research centres of the University, namely the Centre for Medical Biotechnology (ZMB), the Centre for Water and Ecosystems (ZWU) and the Centre for Empirical Research in Education (ZeB).
Life is a complex natural phenomenon. This is reflected in the spectrum of research topics covered by the 19 research groups, ranging from biomolecules through cells and tissues to the behaviour of organisms and the dynamics of ecosystems.

Some of the remarkable events and projects of the last two years include, in 2012, a number of international and national congresses held in Essen, among them several organised or co-­organised by groups from the Faculty of Biology, such as the European Congress of Behavioural Biology (General Zoology research group) and the Annual Meeting of the German Society for Genetics (Genetics and Molecular Biology I research group). The national and international networking of the faculty’s research groups enables many strong interdisciplinary research projects, e. g. the EU-funded projects WISER and REFORM (Aquatic Ecology research group), projects on the development of former coal-mining facilities for the storage of renewable energy (Geology research group), or participation in the Sino-German Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TRR60 (Bioinformatics and Biochemistry research groups). Involvement in such collaborations ­testifies to the convincing scientific work ongoing in the faculty’s research groups, details of which are outlined in the following report.