Biotechnology MSc - 2027/8

Other information

The School of Biosciences is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience.
This programme is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Digital capabilities: The biotechnology industry has evolved from its original empirical approaches to a strong science-based activity. Digital literacy and digital capabilities are therefore essential in the formation of professionals, as these are key tools for successful bioprocess development and optimization. The biotechnology industry heavily depends on IT for the design and construction of microbial strains and cell lines, the design of experiments, the analysis of data and the development of separation and purification processes. These require not only specialised software but also professionals with experience to handle, monitor, control and understand the processes. Only adequate training and familiarity with those tools would allow meeting the requirements for stringent process management and quality control. Our programme will deliver a solid base of IT and computational methods to provide the necessary capabilities to our students, by accessing a wide range of digital resources, modelling and simulation software, bioinformatic tools, and online databases.

Employability: Employability is certainly a core objective of this programme: Concentrating on the requirements of industry and academia, we¿ll aim at delivering soft and hard skills to support the future career of our students. Each module will contain aspects of these objectives embedded into the curriculum in an articulate manner.

Global and cultural capabilities: Biotechnological processes are present in each and every human activity, from food production to remediation of polluted environments to production of specialties or commodities, including biologically active compounds (e.g. drugs, antibiotics, vitamins, etc). We will emphasise the importance of biological processes to develop a sustainable and environmentally friendly industry. Cultural and economic globalisation demand a strong focus on diversity and equality. We will offer our students a clear panorama of the global, cultural, social, political, historical, and comparative contexts that have affected the development of biotechnology, from the artisanal production of food by fermentation to the sophisticated development of engineering biology strategies for synthesis of specialised molecules. We expect an ethnically and culturally diverse recruitment, ensuring global and cultural awareness, contributing to the concept of decolonisation of the curriculum. We will encourage and promote collegiate learning and assessment to create a sense of community where students support their peers. Collective work and discussion will certainly encourage critical analysis and reasoning, including the recognition of different approaches to solve comparable social problems.

Resourcefulness and Resilience: This programme aims at national and international graduates in various disciplines. We expect the candidates to recognise that resourcefulness and resilience are key aspects in the programme, adding value to their degree. A multidisciplinary postgraduate programme like this MSc Biotechnology requires that the students be confronted with a different social and cultural landscape, adapting to a new educational system and in some cases, different language. One of the main objectives of this programme is to guide and support our students, instilling in them independence, perseverance, resilience and commitment in their path to become fully fledged professionals and researchers.