Students
Bachelor’s and Master’s Level Classes
Since the launch of the NCCR Microbiomes, the consortium has been committed to developing and updating existing Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in the field. These efforts equip students with current knowledge and methods across the life sciences.
- Reform of the Bachelor’s Biology curriculum at ETHZ: The new programme uses evolution as a narrative and emphasises general principles and the interdependence of biological systems. Students in Biology, Biochemistry, Interdisciplinary Sciences and Pharmacy take the core biology lectures. Feedback from students and lecturers on the new curriculum has been very positive. In 2026, an open access textbook supporting the programme was published with CRC Press (see below).
- Bachelor’s Bioinformatics: A new course at ETHZ.
- Microbiome block courses: Annual set of four-week courses that cover plant, animal, or computational microbiomes respectively, combining theory and practical laboratory work at ETHZ.
- Sequence a Genome (4 ECTS): An existing Master’s course at UNIL, revised to include metagenome sequencing.
- Microbiome-Centered Writing (1.5 ECTS): A new NCCR Master’s course at UNIL.
- Practical Microbiome Analysis (3 ECTS): A new NCCR Master’s course at UNIL.
- Bacterial Genomes and Genome Evolution (1.5 ECTS): An existing Master’s course at UNIL, revised to focus on functional pathway analysis in open databases.
