The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), based in Basel, Switzerland, is a world class biomedical research institute with a twofold mission — understanding the fundamental mechanisms of health and disease, and training early career scientists. The institute has an international staff of about 330 people, from over 40 countries, and 19 research groups whose main areas of focus are Neurobiology, Genome Regulation and Multicellular Systems. Named after Friedrich Miescher, the Basel biochemist who discovered nucleic acids, the FMI is affiliated with the University of Basel and Novartis Biomedical Research.