The Julius Maximilian University Würzburg (JMU) is a publicly funded higher education institution with a worldwide network of research collaborations and student exchange programmes. Around 29,000 students are trained in its ten faculties by more than 400 professors. Its Medical Faculty is one of the most successful in Germany with a major focus on infectious disease research. Both, Lars Dölken and Florian Erhard, are part of the multidisciplinary Research Centre for Infectious Diseases (ZINF), which brings together experts in microbiology, parasitology, virology, and immunology as well as chemists and clinicians to study the molecular basis of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on gene regulation and RNA biology. Students are associated with the Graduate School for Life Sciences (GSLS).
The Institute for Virology and Immunobiology contains all the equipment necessary for classical and high throughput analyses of virus-host interactions. This includes access to high-throughput analysis of nucleic acid and protein biochemistry and comprises cutting-edge facilities for cDNA library generation, next-generation sequencing (NGS), high-end imaging systems and mass spectrometry. Work will be performed in well-established collaborations with the recently founded Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) and the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig. JMU provides access to all necessary equipment including an in-house computing server and storage system, as well as a computing cluster hosted at the Rechenzentrum of the JMU Würzburg, and BSL1 to BSL3 biosafety level workspaces to permit infectious pathogens research.