In the post-genomic era biology is rapidly transformed into a quantitative science, from systems biology at the cellular level down to detailed descriptions of interacting complexes at the molecular level. Computer modelling serves as a key ingredient in this transformation and has now become an indispensable tool in all branches of life sciences, covering biological processes that transcend many scales in both length and time. Nowadays, we find essential input from modelling in areas as different as population dynamics of species, protein folding and catalytic processes at a scale where each atom makes a difference. Contemporary biological modelling is tremendously wide and expansive, be it molecule-based modelling, cell-based modelling, systems or neural networks.  Drug design is already an established research field in which biological modelling is carried out to systematize the search for new drugs as well as of characterizing already existing ones. Modelling of the properties of the drugs makes it possible to screen candidate compounds, thereby avoiding their use in expensive experiments. It follows that with increased accuracy, applicability and versatility of theoretical modelling a large number of PhDs trained in the area are hired by pharmaceutical companies. The important mission of the academy therefore becomes not only to develop new research methods and provide results per se, but to train young researchers and equipping them with general research skills that are useful in the industrial laboratory.