The Doctoral Programme in Wildlife Biology Research (Finnish acronym LUOVA) started in 1995 and was one of the first doctoral programmes founded in Finland. LUOVA is funded by the University of Helsinki and belongs to the Doctoral School in Environmental, Food and Biological Sciences (YEB).

LUOVA trains doctoral candidates in the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, conservation, and management of natural populations and communities, as well as in taxonomy and systematics, and in computational biology. LUOVA covers both basic and applied research in these fields.

There are approximately 80 doctoral candidates in LUOVA each year and ca. 30% of them are international.