The Institute

The Institute of Molecular Systems Biology (IMSB) is in the Department of Biology at the ETH Zurich. The research groups at IMSB share the same mission: we all work to develop, apply and teach the science of Systems Biology.

We understand Systems Biology as an approach to biological research that studies biological systems and processes as dynamic, integrated networks of interacting molecules. The underlying vision is that the structure and dynamics of such networks will provide insights into the function and control of biological systems that are not apparent from studying the systems’ components.

Neither the technologies to collect the data required to analyze molecular networks, nor the theory and tools to extract functional information from the data is well developed at present. A significant part of the activities in IMSB therefore focuses on the development of new technologies for the collection and analysis of quantitative data at high throughput and their integration into models that represent the behavior of the systems studied.