Subject area: Biomedical Sciences

Introducing Biomedical Sciences

Our Biomedical Sciences programmes have a common structure in Years 1 and 2. This will provide you with a firm grounding in the knowledge, understanding and skills required for our specialist disciplines of:

• anatomy and development
• infectious diseases
• neuroscience
• pharmacology
• physiology or reproductive biology

In Years 3 and 4, you will focus on exploring your chosen discipline in depth. There are opportunities to transfer between honours disciplines at the end of Years 2 and 3.

Each year of our Biomedical Sciences programmes is defined by an overarching theme. Year 1 highlights “Inspirational Science”, examining the importance of Biomedical Sciences to health and disease. We use representative narratives of discovery and breakthroughs in understanding to capture the excitement and enthusiasm of our students and facilitate their transformation into active learners.

In Year 2, you will develop the building blocks of discipline-specific knowledge and understanding. At the same time, you will examine each of our honours disciplines through the key research questions being pursued by academic staff and the wider Biomedical Sciences research community.

Year 3 looks at the key processes of learning from, or developing knowledge from, experiment placed in the context of a chosen discipline. You examine how the appropriate construction of the blocks of knowledge developed in years 1 and 2 support the enquiry and discovery process. Learn about the scientific method, structured reasoning, inferences from data, design of experiments and about the range of experimental techniques currently available in the Biomedical Sciences. Year 3 study involves compulsory, discipline-specific, and elective course choices.

Year 4 is very much orientated to “research in practice” - the process of learning by experiment - employing the knowledge and skills base developed across the programme – ultimately exploring how new knowledge is produced and shared. The Senior Honours year places students at the cutting edge of modern biomedical research by including a major research project involving, for example, either original laboratory-based biomedical research, clinically related research or literature-based research working alongside internationally recognised research scientists and clinicians.

Applications

Please apply for only one of the programmes in this group. Compulsory courses in Years 1 and 2 keep programmes in all our honours biomedical sciences disciplines open. You will have the opportunity to switch between honours programmes at the end of Year 2 and at the end of Year 3 provided the required courses have been passed.