Pharmacy and drug development

Hi there,
If you are interested in a career in the pharmaceutical industry & drug design there are many degrees that would allow you to do this. For example, at Bath you could do:
- Chemistry for Drug Discovery
- Pharmacology
- Biochemistry
- Natural Sciences
What you chooe depends on what area you'd like to have more expertise in and specialise in. I myself study Natural Sciences and this is a good option if your interests lie across multiple sciences. For example, I major in biology, minor in pharmacology/physiology and take organic chemistry as an optional module. However, you could choose majors and minors from physics, biochemistry, chemistry and environmental sciences as wel. A huge benefit of the NatSci course is that it gives you a very interdisciplinary knowledge and sets you up for a massive range of careers if you aren't dead-set on one path.

You don't necessarily need a PhD to get into research - plenty of Bath graduates get research jobs with an undergraduate degree alone. Whether or not you decided to do a masters and/or PhD depends on how specialised you want to become. However, being more specialised and having and masters or PhD instead of just a BSc would obviously increase your employability.

If you want to go into research, I'd highly recommend looking into universities that offer a placement year in industry. All the Bath courses I listed above have the option to do a placement year, where you essentially go and work for a year. This could be anything from in an office to in a research lab. Many placements are paid, so you'd earn a full salary, and having this industry experience makes you massively more employable than other candidates. Bath students do placements with some huge companies/employers, such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Cancer Research UK and Rolls Royce. Many of these placements are in labs doing drug design related research, which would be beneficial to someone like yourself who wants to pursue a carer in that field. Furthermore, doing a placement gives you industry links and placement employers may offer a graduate job to past placement students.

If you have a relevant degree and do well in it (i.e. get the grades), and get relevant experience (i.e. do a placement or work experience) it is not massively difficult to get a job doing research. There are so many companies and labs, and so much research currently being done that there are undoubtedly plenty of research jobs available.

I hope this has helped,
Eryn, a second year Natural Sciences student

Hi thank you so much for you reply! That sounds so cool, I love chemistry so much and would love to have a chem based career. If I studied medicine (as am also contemplating a career as a dr) could I still do research without having to do another degree? )