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A Guest Post by Andi Croft
A career in Life Sciences is something to look into if you want to add excitement to your life. More so, if you geek out in Science and want to bring a significant change to the world.
But, what does a career in Life Sciences exactly look like?
Well, if you want to get involved in developing vaccines, ensuring foods are safe, improving technology, and making discoveries day by day, this is the career path worth pursuing. And the best part is that there are a lot of job opportunities waiting for you!
Below, we share the eight popular Life Sciences jobs you should look into and how it can help you change the world.
Biomedical Scientist
If you are interested in improving health and healthcare by researching, becoming a biomedical scientist might benefit you.
Biomedical Scientists are people involved in researching new ways to detect and prevent diseases. You need to have the curiosity and desire to discover these things. It’s also essential that you’re diligent, have strong attention to detail, strong analytical skills, and strong critical thinking skills to succeed in the field.
Biotechnologist
If you are more interested in working with living organisms to innovate products, you can become a Biotechnologist.
This role is usually a term used by Biotechnology companies, and the scope is extensive. You can be any of the following:
- Environmental biotechnologist
- Medical biotechnologist
- Industrial biotechnologist
- Agricultural biotechnologist
There’s a lot of industries you can go to depending on your field of interest.
Mainly, this role would involve a lot of experimentation in living organisms. This career is also involved in redesigning specific components to enhance our existing systems in healthcare, food, or technology.
Computational Biologist
If you love math as much as science and love a career that tackles both areas, then perhaps being a computational biologist is for you.
As the name implies, this career involves a lot of data to analyze and measure for you to understand biological systems. You can be called a data analyst, data curator, database or software developer, and more, depending on the company you join in.
This means that you’ll be in charge of the software used and how you can implement a set of algorithms to interpret data needed for research.
Clinical Research Associate
You can also become a clinical research associate and get involved in organizing and administering clinical trials.
Some of your most significant responsibilities would include writing up procedures and reports, briefing clinical investigators, and setting up or disbanding a study. You will be involved in the process of clinical trials.
That said, you need to have excellent organization skills to be effective in this role. Apart from that, you must be excellent at communicating, curious, and confident in what you are doing. Because after all, how can you monitor the clinical trial properly if you don’t have the confidence to decide what to do on each clinical process or phase.
Cellular Biologist
If you have a great interest in cells, along with their structure and behavior, then becoming a cellular biologist might be for you.
This is another life sciences career that is very broad as it involves every organism that has cells. It’s up to you if you’d want to focus on animals, plants, human beings, microbes, and other organisms that have life.
As for your purpose, you study cells to develop solutions to any life-related problems. This includes clinical research, genetic testing, or drug production.
Hence, you are likely to see a combination of several science-related subjects in one experiment.
Genetic Counselor
Another option you have is to be a genetic counselor. As the name implies, it involves studying the human genome. These are the people responsible for analyzing a person’s genetics to predict a person’s chances of acquiring a disease.
As a genetic counselor, you would have the option to work in laboratories and be hands-on on genetic analysis, or you can work directly for patients. The latter means contacting a genetic counselor working in labs, waiting for results to show, and reviewing them for your patient.
You need excellent communications skills here as you’d need to explain data clearly. And you’d also need patience and compassion in handling patience that might have gotten a disease.
Conservation Scientist
If you’re interested in working to protect or conserve biological life and ecosystems, perhaps being a conservation scientist is for you.
The role of conservation scientists is to preserve the planet’s ecology, including the soil, cultural heritage, plant and animal species, and more.
You can work in a field or a lab; it’s up to you. But expect that it will involve a lot of write-up reports, strategic discussions, and coming up with solutions to protect natural assets and improve the planet’s ecology.
Drug Safety Specialist
Lastly, you can also become a drug safety specialist. These are people that specialize mainly in drugs and ensure their safety.
The job involves creating medical reports, tracking drugs, and ensuring that regulations are followed. This job will also require you to perform drug-related safety regulations.
If there are any severe effects seen on one drug, they’re the ones involved in reviewing these cases. They will submit a report so that the manufacturer can make improvements.
Over to You
According to Michelle Dipp, a Life Sciences expert, many exciting opportunities are surrounding this industry. More so if you want a career that makes an impact in the field of medicine.
If you’re ever thinking of taking a job in this field, don’t hesitate and find out more details about the eight jobs listed above. That way, you can find what resonates with you the most.
