Dietmar Birzer (Section CBB), Kewir Y. Nyuyki Dufe (Section Neurobiology), Wolfgang Ernst (Section BIOMED), Kieran Tembei Forkwa (Section Neurobiology), Claudia Müller (Section Neurobiology), Johannes Schönberger (Section CBB), Dominik Steppan (Section BIOMED), Britta Swoboda (Section CBB) and Christa Zollbrecht (Section BIOMED) successfully defended their PhD thesis in November/ December 2012. We congratulate them for their excellent performance and wish them all the best for their future career.