This curriculum focuses on education of young researchers on the principles of modern biology including Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology, in order to form a researcher suitable to be placed in public (academic and non-academic) and private strategic research sectors.
Interdisciplinarity is a main commitment of this curriculum that comprises different research areas with the aim to integrate basic biological research with biotechnological applications. Research projects are organized following a problem oriented approach, that is to meet societal challenges in life and health sciences trying to give answers to them, as required by Horizon 2020. Those challenges can be identified in:
- development of the bio-based economy, including characterization of new antibiotics and new enzymes and other molecules for industrial applications, from prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms using also genomics and bioinformatics;
- study of the effect of climate changes on organisms;
- application of emerging biotechnologies for environmental biomonitoring (development of bioindicators for water quality) and for animal health, including men health (role of proteasomes in diseases, DNA vaccination in breast cancer);
- nutrition and food research (selection of probiotics and active polyphenols).
Intersectoral mobility is encouraged, facilitated by the collaboration with national innovative start up, such as Synbiotech and Biolab. Furthermore, this curriculum includes also an international academia-biotech partnerships with CureLab Oncology (USA) as example of a successful application of basic research approach into a rational product development. That combination makes this collaboration a potential productive venue for successful drug and vaccine development.
All doctoral candidates are strongly encouraged to perform European and international mobility with the many institutions in collaboration with UNICAM such as the Imperial College of London, the Universite’ de Strasbourg, Institute de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), Northeastern University of Boston, Department of Biology, Harvard Medical School, division of Genetics, Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Superieure.
In particular cases, a specific agreement regulates a co-tutelle relationship between UNICAM and a partner institution outside of Italy. This allows doctoral candidates to be co-supervised by professors of the two institutions and to perform long stages in the partner institution. New co-tutelle relationships are established every year. At present they are with University of Pennsylvania (USA) and University of Toulouse III (France).