The UKB is ranked #1 of 7 university hospitals in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, both in clinical service and research output. The field of medical genetics and genetic epidemiology is one of the research focuses of the Bonn medical faculty, with the Institute of Human Genetics being at the center of many activities. The Institute of Human Genetics has a longstanding expertise in genetic studies of multifactorial diseases, unrivalled by any other center in Germany. The research facilities of the Institute of Human Genetics include the Department of Genomics in the Life & Brain Research Center, with its high-throughput biobanking and genotyping facility, and the next generation sequencing core of the medical faculty. The biobanking facility of the Institute of Human Genetics houses >100,000 DNA samples. It has a highly automated DNA extraction pipeline and the processing of samples fulfils all requirements of the German data protection law. High-throughput genotyping, expression and methylation analyses are performed with technologies from various providers (Illumina, Sequenom, Affymetrix). Next generation sequencing is performed with one Illumina HiSeq 2500 and two Illumina MiSeq.

The largest collaborative grant on the molecular causes of major psychiatric disease in Germany (IntegraMent; funded within the e:Med scheme of the German Ministry of Education and Research) is coordinated in Bonn, with partners from 12 German research institutions. The aim of IntegraMent is to make a decisive contribution to the unravelling ofdisease causing molecular pathogenic-mechanisms. This will be achieved through the application of an integrated, systems-based approach, both within and across traditional diagnostic categories.

Markus M. Nöthen is head of the Institute of Human Genetics with a strong background in the genetic analyses of multifactorial traits. He is author/co-author on more than > 700 peer reviewed articles and is coordinator of IntegraMent. Franziska Degenhardt leads the "Genetics of Schizophrenia" working group at the Institute of Human Genetics. She is a Clinical Geneticist and is author/co-author on > 70 peer-reviewed articles, including a shared first authorship in The Lancet.