Bioinformatics integrates two disciplines which lie at the centre of technical progress - computer science and molecular biology - to form a new, strongly application-orientated branch of computer science. Our research and development has the task of supporting biologists, geneticists and other specialists from the life sciences with intelligent and specialised software systems for the analysis of molecular-biological data and for the simulation of biological processes. Bioinformatics helps in-silico to find the causes of diseases, to design efficient laboratory test methods and to conceive, develop and test new medicines faster and more inexpensively. In the research project BIOMIS (Bio and medical information systems) specialised laboratory applications are developed for different ranges of application (e.g.: protein interaction data bases, sequence analysis tools, expert systems for quality assurance in test laboratories).

Computers and information technologies supplement our human possibilities in many areas of application. It is already foreseeable that within the coming years computers will become more and more seamlessly integrated into our environment while at the same time our interaction with the computer itself will be revolutionised. From the simple desktop applications we know today, systems will be developed which permit several users to communicate simultaneously with one another, as the computer (for them no longer visible) serves in a supporting role providing central communication.

More and more day-to-day activities (parking an automobile, the operation of household and entertainment electronics devices, etc.) as well as professional applications (e.g. in manufacturing or in automotive applications) are aided by embedded systems. Mobility ("anytime and anywhere") as well as the guarantee of security and the private sphere are all conditions for user acceptance of such technologies. Numerous innovative, basic technologies form the building blocks for the blueprints of application-adapted systems. Optimised processes for combined hardware/software system designs make possible the efficient development of specific infrastructures, upon which the most modern applications can be implemented.