Program Overview

PhD Programme in Biomedicine

The PhD Programme in Biomedicine is the PhD programme of the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. This programme forms part of the UPF Doctoral School and provides graduate students a training framework to develop a research project and complete a doctoral thesis in the fields of health and life sciences that allows them to become scientists.

Programme Overview

We welcome graduate students from natural and medical sciences such as Biology, Physics, Medicine or Biochemistry, as well as from quantitative sciences such as Mathematics, Statistics or Computer Science. Our doctoral programme is an in-person programme that carries out all of its activities in English and every year attracts a large number of students from abroad. These activities aim at preparing students to become independent researchers pursuing a scientific career.

Regulations

Since the academic year, the PhD Programme in Biomedicine follows the latest regulations for doctoral studies in Spain, the so-called Royal Decree (RD) 99/2011, which were introduced to comply with the guidelines and recommendations of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) on doctoral studies.

Acquired Competencies

The programme enables students to:

• Apply scientific methodology to test hypotheses in the biomedical field
• Present the objectives, development and results of biomedical research to a specialized or general audience
• Understand the management process of biomedical projects and international teams
• Evaluate the feasibility of a biomedical research project
• Anticipate the ethical implications of a biomedical research project

Why MELIS Department

The MELIS department is located at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona - PRBB) and includes a large number of research groups organized into four research programmes which cover the following research lines:

• Cell and Molecular Biology
• Molecular Medicine
• Evolutionary Biology and Complex Systems
• Biomedical Informatics
• Genetics
• Neurosciences
• Systems Bioengineering
• Public Health and Education in Health Sciences
• Science Communication
• Clinical and Translational Research

Alliances

MELIS has made a big effort to establish important strategic alliances with surrounding research institutes affiliated to the UPF such as:

• Barcelona Institute for Global Health (IS Global)
• Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG)
• Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM)
• Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE)
• Pasqual Maragall Foundation (FPM)
• European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

Research Funding

The MELIS has evolved to achieve excellence and international leadership in Cell and Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology and Neurosciences, gathering substantial external funding from competitive sources and research contracts with industry, both national and international, of over 10 million Euros per year. Also, the number of scientific articles produced by the MELIS has been increasing to a total of more than 1,000 articles in the last 5 years.

Performance Evaluation

Thanks to an international external advisory board, there is a continuous evaluation process of the scientific production of our Faculty, Research groups, Programs, Board of Directors and the Recruitment policies. We think that this constitutes a leading path for public universities if they aim to compete with research institutes for quality on research.

Recognitions

The contents of this doctoral programme have been verified by the Catalan Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (AQU Catalonia) with a qualification "Quality Label towards Excellence". The contents of this doctoral programme have been verified by the Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) who also awarded a "Quality Label towards Excellence" (MEE).