The thriving city of Berlin is a hotspot for excellent research with four universities and several Max Planck, Leibniz, Helmholtz and Fraunhofer institutes that attract a world-class scientific community.

The Campus Berlin-Dahlem with the FU, the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) and the MPIMG harbors a significant number of groups working at the interface of life sciences (molecular biology, genome research) and formal sciences (mathematics, computer science). The mathematical and computational approaches to study biological questions are manifold, covering mathematics, statistics, and computer science. The unique concentration at FU and MPIMG offers an exceptional opportunity to familiarize students with the breadth of formal methods in computational biology and scientific computing and exposes them to the scope of questions these tools can be applied to.

Life in Berlin and Germany

• Official Berlin website - Here you can find information about different aspects of Berlin: Hotels and Hotel Booking, Entertainment and Tickets, Political System and Local Authorities, Business in Berlin
• Visit Berlin - More information about Berlin in various languages
• International guide to Berlin and All about Berlin - General information for foreigners about Berlin
• Living in Germany
• Facts about Germany, e-book edition in several languages
• Living and working in Germany - A guide for international scientists at Max Planck Institutes
• Berlin public transport (BVG), BVG trip planner
• Zitty event magazine
• Mobile phone accounts
• Accommodation: Immobilienscout24, WG-Gesucht.de, Wohnungsboerse. Check also this page on the intranet.
• The German government has published a glossary to explain terms related to work and life in Germany like Blaue Karte, BAFöG, Kirchensteuer. Terms are explained in German, English, Spanish and French.
• Health insurance in Germany

 

Learning German

• Visit the German as a Foreign Language Department website at the Freie Universität Berlin for more information. 
• The Berliner Volkshochschulen offers fee-based German courses. 
• The Goethe Institut offers plenty of free resources to learn German: exercises, movies, podcasts ...
• deutschland.de
• Deutsche Welle
• Information on the reimbursement of costs for German and English courses offered outside the institute (MPIMG intranet)

 

Personal liability insurance

It is strongly recommended to take out personal liability insurance (Haftpflichtversicherung) in Germany. Even though it is not mandatory, it can save you a lot of trouble because in Germany, you are legally responsible for any damages caused to others by yourself or someone else from your household (even your pets!). Personal liability insurance pays if you damage or destroy another person's belongings, for instance if you accidentally break someone else's glasses or spill some beer on a friend's laptop. Most Germans have that kind of insurance because it is inexpensive and protects you from having to pay for the damage with your own money. 

In case you already hold a personal liability insurance in your home country, check whether insurance cover is also provided while you are in Germany.

You can find more information for instance here: https://www.studying-in-germany.org/liability-insurance-germany/