Students and industry

Year-long placements 

Each year, some students choose to take a year out of their degree programme and gain a year of relevant work experience. This does not form part of the degree, and is not credited, although we encourage and support students who wish to do a year long placement in between their penultimate and final year. Placements vary greatly, and students are required to submit a report to the Academic Supervisor. We are committed to helping our students with these excellent opportunities.

Summer placements

We also encourage students to undertake shorter projects throughout their summer vacation period, from around June - September. If you would like to offer a short vacation placement or project, please get in touch via the email address below. 

Research projects in industry

We are working with organisations to improve the employability of our graduates by seeking opportunities for masters students to undertake projects in industry settings. This is an exciting opportunity to work with our students over a 12 week project, addressing a real need within your business.

Work based projects could be:

• preliminary research for proposed developments
• input into an ongoing project
• a review of a new or existing area
• a general idea of a business need which requires further development
• market research.

Students eligible to undertake a work based project will be studying with the School of Biological Sciences on one of our MSc programmes. We are offer the chance to work with masters level students from a wide range of disciplines from within Biological Sciences. Students are studying in one, or a combination, of the following fields; biochemistry, bioinformatics, biotechnology, data science, drug discovery, synthetic biology and whole system biology.

Past projects have included “Development of novel tools for studying Parkinson disease pathology using Drosophila”, “Creation of a RT-PCR method for the detection of Hepatitis E in pork and pork products” and “Detection of antibodies and antigens for use on DNA oligo-based microarray”. We accept a wide variety of projects, and are happy to discuss any of your ideas.

Requirements from your organisation

• A challenging project that is important to the organisation
• A clearly scoped work plan with clear milestones
• Work space and equipment necessary for the tasks required
• An experienced employee who will act as a supervisor / mentor to support the student and include them into the work team
• An induction process covering workplace culture, professional standards, health and safety and technical requirements
• We encourage organisation supervisors to comment and advise on ONE draft of the dissertation only and complete a short feedback form at the end of the project.

Timescales

• Projects will tend to start in early May and finish at the end of July. 

How to get involved

If you are interested in submitting a project please email mscprojects.sbs@ed.ac.uk for more information.

Please check back for updates soon