The goal of the graduate school is to educate a new generation of highly qualified scientists in mastering essential skills in the seminal and interdisciplinary field of parasitology and vector biology.
The emergence of new epidemics and infectious diseases in our latitudes is favoured by rapidly increasing globalization, as well as factors like climate change, population growth and biodiversity loss. Reflecting the highly divergent state of current knowledge on the global diversity of medically important organisms, key topics in this graduate school include, among others: identification and description of new and emerging pathogens, vectors and reservoir hosts and their present distributions, phenotypic and genetic evolution of their dispersal capabilities and climatic tolerance, investigation of factors for pathogenicity and vectorial abilities, both in laboratory experiments and in the field, as well as risk assessments and predictive modelling of distributions under global and regional models of climate change.
IMPact-Vector is a joint programme of Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum (SGN), Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) and Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and is funded by the Leibniz-Association.
