Research at BIO
The research activity of BIO covers a wide spectrum, from proteins to genes and enzymes to processes in cells and further on to the growth, reproduction and survival of organisms to the dynamics and structure of populations, communities and ecosystems. Our research goes from the very basic to understand to origin of life, to the more applied to understand how biological systems are influences by human activities and how we can manage the services provides by ecosystems.

The research groups of BIO mainly conduct research within microbiology, marine and terrestrial ecology and evolutionary biology, fisheries, biodiversity, developmental biology in fish, aquaculture, deep-sea biology, fish health, environmental toxicology and paleoecology. We have an extensive activity within molecular biology that includes biomedicine, biophysics, structural studies, biochemical and molecular characterization of proteins, and functional studies of living model systems like bacteria, yeast, sebra fish and cell cultures.
We collect data in the field, on cruises at sea and in dry and wet laboratories, through experiments, observations and time series, and use methods in biostatistics, computational biology and bioinformatics.
The Department of Biological Sciences has the largest and strongest university research environment within marine biology and we have large and strong activities within ecology and molecular life sciences.
BIO's external milieu
The department has close cooperation with other groups at the University of Bergen and Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, mainly the, Department of Earth Sciences, Geophysical Institute, Bergen Museum, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology and Computational Biology Unit (CBU)
BIO collaborates closely with other research institutes in the Bergen region, including the Institute of Marine Research (IMR)
Centres of Excellence and Innovation
BIO is involved in 2 Centres of Research Excellence at UiB:
A Centre for Research-based Innovation:
- Sea Lice Research Centre The centre's formal period of function has ran out. We are currently working together with the centre's industrial partners to find a solution to continue the running of the centre.
and one centre for excellence in education: