Munich is one of the European focal points for research in medicine and in the life sciences. The city is home to three biologically oriented Max Planck Institutes - the MPI of Biochemistry, MPI of Neurobiology and MPI of Psychiatry - as well as the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the two renowned universities Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and Technische Universität München (TUM). Every year this exceptional concentration of research facilities attracts more than a thousand graduate students from all over the world to Munich to start their scientific career.
This confluence is an outstanding opportunity for cooperation between the different research fields. To promote an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas graduate students are setting up a framework, the life science community munich. In 2007 the first PhD symposium hosted over 400 PhD students discussing their research. Due to the great success of this inaugurating event, a follow-up symposium took place on the 2nd of April 2009. Again, the symposium included talks and poster presentations by PhD students, with emphasis on encouraging interaction between researchers of different fields.