The Department of Life and Environmental Sciences (DiSVA) was established in 2011 by merging a number of laboratories involved in a wide spectrum of fundamental and applied research topics. The department is a center of excellence of the Università Politecnica delle Marche and includes more than 100 scientists and technicians that conduct research in areas such as analytical and organic chemistry, biophysics, cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics, microbiology and biotechnology, systematics, physiology and reproduction, marine biology, ecology, marine conservation, eco-toxicology and oceanography.

The DiSVA is coordinator and partner of several EU projects  and participates in the National Antarctic Research Program and is involved in international expeditions to the Arctic and many world’s oceans. It is also a local unit of several research consortia, and hosts the headquarters of the Italian Association of Oceanology and Limnology (AIOL), the Italian Society of Ecology (SITE), the Italian Society of Neutron Spectroscopy (SISN) and the Italian Zoological Union (UZI). It also hosts the editorial office of several international scientific journals. Three academic spin-off companies have been initiated by DiSVA's scientists and graduate students. 

In the last five years, scientists from DiSVA published more than 200 ISI papers (Web of Science), on average cited more than 2500 times per year. These scientists directly collaborate with numerous research centers and Large Scale facilities worldwide coordinating and carrying out several national and international research projects.