The success of modern research in many areas of biology, pharmacy and medicine is becoming more and more dependent on the support of suitable computer programmes. Modern lab techniques generate sequence data on a large scale - examples of this are the sequencing of DNA or RNA molecules or the amino acid sequences of proteins - the connection and meaning of which only become clear to scientists with the help of computer-assisted processing. In order to achieve this it has to be possible to save and search for large amounts of data efficiently and to understand the biological/chemical function of the represented molecules and to reproduce this on the computer. The same applies for the functioning of regulatory networks, individual cells or in general all computer-assisted research in natural science. Computer science should support natural scientific research by means of imaging, simulations or predictions (for example the topology of a molecule or active substance) as well as allowing the efficient recovery of known information in the rapidly growing databases.

In addition to profound knowledge in computer science, graduates who want to work in this area require knowledge in biology and chemistry as well as a solid mathematical background. In accordance with this the degree is offered in cooperation with the Departments of Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics. About two thirds of the degree is in computer science and about one third of the courses are in the cooperating departments.