UIT has five faculties (Social Science, Science, Humanities, Law and Medicine) and a college; The Norwegian College of Fishery Science (NCFS). The College is involved in SEAFOODplus. It has a particular responsibility for the development of fundamental and scientific expertise within all areas of fisheries and aquaculture research in Norway. NCFS is also responsible for educating candidates for employment in the fishing industry and fisheries management. The College offers a number of BSC, MSC, and PHD degree programmes, and the present number of students at NCFS is approximately 650. NCFS has a permanent staff of 200, where 60 are engaged in teaching and research activities. Additionally, externally funded contract staff counts about 50 people, the majority performing research. The institution has a budget of 200 million NOK, of which 125 million NOK is governmental funding and 75 million NOK is external funding. NCFS has 4 departments, and the Dept. of Marine Biotechnology is involved in SEAFOODplus. This department is responsible for research on fish as food item, fish immunology and fish health, as well as marine bioprospecting. Within seafood research, the department is engaged in occurrence of health promoting factors in seafood, as well as maintenance of active compounds through processing. This research has mostly been carried out with fat compounds, but non-fat low-molecular compounds have also been included during the last few years. The department is also engaged in research concerning quality during processing, and occurrence of quality defects in seafood products, both naturally occurring and process-induced defects. The Dept. of Marine Biotechnology has also a strong activity within fish immunology, fish pathogens, effects of probiotics, and development of vaccines.