About five million individuals are affected by liver diseases in Germany, and the causes of these diseases often remain unknown. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has recently funded a research network entitled ‘Systems Medicine of the Liver’ aimed at better understanding the etiology and progression of liver disease. Within this project, the PhD positions described below are available at the IFADO (Leibniz Research Centre) in Dortmund, Germany: http://www.ifado.de/toxikologie/.