Bremen University

The old Hanse City of Bremen is situated in the northwestern German lowlands, about 70 km from the North Sea, and was Germany's first "City of Science" in 2005. Beautiful old buildings (e.g. the townhall, UNESCO world cultural heritage) and exciting modern architecture (Universum Science Center) are almost completely surrounded by a "green belt", structured by rivers and to a considerable extent assigned as nature conservation areas. A special student ticket for public transport, included in the enrolment fee, allows students to explore even the wider surroundings from the North Sea coast with the unique Wadden Sea ecosystem and the popular beaches of Cuxhaven to the City of Hamburg.

Bremen has a long tradition as seafaring city and as a centre for overseas trade, maritime technology, marine research and education. In fact, marine research is one of three main research foci of the University of Bremen. The University of Bremen has about 22,000 students and its campus is located to the north of the city centre, conveniently accessible by tram.

At the Faculty of Biology and Chemistry (FB 2), specialised research teams focus on Marine Microbiology, Marine Botany, Marine Zoology, and Marine Chemistry. In addition, the University has departments for Physical Oceanography (FB 1) and Marine Geosciences (FB 5), all contributing to the wide expertise in state-of-the-art marine research, on which the ERASMUS MUNDUS M.Sc. in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation is based. The University of Bremen also hosts the DFG Research Centre Ocean Margins (RCOM) and a world-leading archive of marine sediment cores. One of the latest buildings on the campus belongs to MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Research.

Teaching and research at the University of Bremen strongly benefit from the unique concentration of world-class marine research institutions in the Federal State of Bremen. Heads of Departments and other leading scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (MPI) and of the Leibniz-Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT) are at the same time ordinary professors at the University of Bremen. Most of the courses and practicals of EMBC will be taught in small groups in the laboratories and facilities of the different research teams at the university and at the associated institutions. Thus, students are integrated in active research teams already early in their career and trained on the most modern equipment and techniques.