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Pozna¨½ University of Life Sciences is based in one of the main cities of western Poland, closer to Berlin than to Warsaw, but on a direct line to both.

While giving its foundation date as 1951, it traces its origins back to the activities in the 1870s of August Czeskowski ¨C whose name it took between 1996 and 2008 ¨C and the formation of the faculty of agriculture at the University of Poznan in 1919. Raised to university status in 1972, it took its current name in 2008.

It educates more than 100,000 students, based on campuses in the districts of Solaz and Golecin, and divided between faculties of agriculture, horticulture and bioengineering, forestry and wood technology, environmental and mechanical engineering, and economics. A number of master¡¯s courses are delivered in English, as are all doctoral classes, although students may choose the language in which they are examined. The student to staff ratio of 6:1 was found by THE to be the sixth best in Europe and second best in Poland.

The continuing education department runs a University of the Third Age and organises consumer research sessions for over 65s, whose needs are often neglected in product research. It also delivers courses in beekeeping and piglet production.

Experimental farms and forestry stations include a hunting farm at Zielanka. PULS researchers have pioneered the use of YouTube films to studying wild animals, examined how far birds use manmade materials in nest building and helped to develop a programme for recycling end-of-life composites into chipboard.