Question: i love biology and and i hope to make a career out of it (as a bio-technologist) seeing as you have an interest in that as well do you think the is a need for people in that field and how should i go about it

Christopher Bullock answered on 13 Jun 2017:

Hi Lucy,
Fantastic! You are completely right that biotechnology is the future, I work on the medicine/healthcare side of things but it will become very important for fields like energy and food supply too. There is a big need for more people to train in this area and there are a lot of well paid jobs available. In general, these jobs tend to go to people with high-level academic qualifications meaning at least an undergraduate science degree but normally a masters or PhD too (this is one of the reasons I decided to stay in university rather than join a company after my first degree).

Not just in this instance, but in general, when you are thinking about what to study through school and into university you should always think about the kind of job you want to be doing when you are 30. Keep making smart choices that will give you opportunities in the area you want to work in. If you want ideas about the careers out there, get on google and find different types of biotechnology employers. Most companies/institutions are really happy to have people in to show them what they are working on and in many cases will offer work experience. We definitely welcome people into the University of Manchester to show them the research that is going on for instance.

Biotechnology is complicated, meaning that people with lots of different expertise have to work together to be able to address the challenges. This is what is known as interdisciplinary science. As well as other engineers, I work with Physicists, Chemists, Biologists, Pharmacists and Medical Doctors. In other words, there are lots of possible routes to get into biotechnology and there are no wrong choices when it comes to scientific disciplines.

However, the one thing that I would say is that the people who do really well tend to have a good basic knowledge across the sciences (as an engineer, I have to be able to understand the basics of what my chemist and biologist colleagues are telling me). I took A-levels in Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry and that all-round knowledge definitely still helps me on a daily basis. I actually didn’t like chemistry much at school, I wanted to take an A-level in history instead, but I got advised that I should do it to bridge my knowledge between physics and biology. I am really grateful for that advice as I now find myself performing chemical reactions almost every day!

I am very happy to answer any more questions you have, as trying to encourage people like you it my whole motivation for doing this!