The Cantre of Excellence in Gene and Environmental Technologies, nominated as the National Centre of Excellence by the Ministry of Education and Science in 2001, submitted its final report to the Ministry in February 2008. New Estonian Centres of Excellence for the period 2008-2015 will be nominated in the second half of 2008.

The Centre of Excellence in Gene and Environmental Technologies was organized on the basis of the existing laboratories of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), the University of Tartu (UT), the UT Centre for Technological Excellence (departments of Gene and Environmental Technologies; later the Institute of Technology) and the Institute of Zoology and Hydrobiology of the UT. The centre embraced 10 cutting-edge research groups: bioinformatics, biochemistry, biotechnology, evolutionary biology, functional genomics, genetics, microbiology and virology, molecular biology, cell biology and plant physiology.

Within seven years of activity the Centre of Excellence carried out frontier research in molecular and cell biology, microbial and human genetics, biochemistry, microbiology and virology, bioinformatics. Besides that the Centre guaranteed the preparing of skilled specialists for the developing sector of biotechnology and biomedicine in Estonia, considered also a priority from the viewpoint of economic growth. 168 Master’s Thesis and 38 Doctoral Thesis were defended in the Council of IMCB. The research groups of the Centre of Excellence published 445 scientific papers; the groups came up with 19 scientific inventions.

The centre significantly improved its infrastructure by opening a core laboratory of molecular and cell biology in Riia 23 Str, Tartu, actively participating in the measure 2.3 (Promotion of research and development activities and innovation) of the European Structural Funds. The Centre received 12,5 million crowns from the Research and development infrastructure development programme, project „Core laboratoires of biomedicine and molecular and cell biology” and 16,9 million crowns from the Centre of Excellence of the Estonian Science Programme, project “Modernizing the technological platform of Molecular and Cell Biology”. From the Ministry of Education and Science the Centre received 14,7 million crowns.