The Jena School for Microbial Communication (JSMC) is funded by the German Excellence Initiative. It conceptionally combines different research areas (microbial communities, interactions with plant, animal and human hosts and environmental interactions) to a comprehensive picture of microbial communication (www.jsmc.uni-jena.de). JSMC is an ambitious Graduate School prospectively comprising 150 PhD students who will be educated in a structured, interdisciplinary training program based on top-level fundamental research. Four faculties of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, six non-university research institutions as well as twelve partner companies are participating in this cutting edge research and training program which includes an innovative PhD program, career development and intensive sociocultural care. Three embedded existing Research Training Groups as well as twelve other cooperative research projects are engaged to incorporate novel research areas to achieve a complete view of microbial communication.