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Biosciences

View the employability skills

A graduate in biosciences typically will have the ability to:

  • demonstrate a wide knowledge of essential facts, major concepts, principles and theories associated with the chosen discipline
  • analyse critically and assess information and data, and their setting within a theoretical framework
  • deploy appropriate practical and presentational techniques and methodologies including data analysis and the use of statistics to communicate results
  • engage with current developments in the biosciences and their applications, and the philosophical and ethical issues involved
  • exercise intellectual skills including applying subject knowledge and understanding to address familiar and unfamiliar problems and appreciating the need for ethical standards and professional codes of conduct
  • apply practical skills including designing, planning, conducting and reporting on investigations through individual or group projects, paying due attention to risk assessment, relevant health and safety regulations, and procedures for obtaining informed consent
  • apply numeracy, communications and information technology skills efficiently
  • use effective interpersonal and teamworking skills including demonstrating an appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of science and of the validity of different points of view
  • self-manage and pursue professional development and to think independently, set tasks and solve problems.

The biosciences may be described as the study of life at all levels of complexity from molecules to populations. Whilst life-forms are built from relatively few types of atoms, these are assembled into ever more complex levels of organisation in molecules, cells, tissues and organs, organisms, communities and ecosystems.

The biosciences are a family of methods and disciplines grouped around the investigation of life processes and the inter-relationships of living organisms. This may involve studies at a variety of levels from molecules to populations. All students should have at least some appreciation of all of these levels.

The biosciences are divided into many specialisms. In addition to wide ranging degrees such as biology, biological sciences and life sciences, there are sub-disciplines within this area that focus on particular groups of organisms (e.g. entomology). Other degrees emphasise specific technologies, interactions or systems (e.g. animal behaviour, biochemistry, biotechnology), or the environments that living organisms inhabit (e.g. ecology, environmental biology, marine biology): some are sub-disciplines directed towards particular applications (e.g. forensics, brewing and distilling). The biosciences include areas (e.g. genetics and molecular biology) in which rapid change and development are evident and where new knowledge and technologies are swiftly spread through the subject. This means that there is an increasing requirement to prepare graduates carefully for continuing their self-education and development after graduation to maintain their knowledge and understanding of rapidly changing areas.

Bioscience graduates are employed in a range of posts which may, or may not, be related to the discipline they studied. They include accountancy and other related financial professions, forensic scientist, higher education lecturer, immunologist, scientist, industrial research scientist, process development, research scientist (medical), toxicologist and commercial, industrial and public sector management.

To check the growing range of resources produced by the Subject Centre to support employability and the use of this profile (including the Skills and Attributes map) go to www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk.

This profile, produced in 2006, is based on the QAA benchmark to be found at www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/default.asp


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