Bioscience and Health Investigative Project

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Professor Carolyn Moores
• Assessment: a literature review plan and annotated bibliography (10%), research question and hypothesis (10%), literature review (20%), research findings and analysis (10%), final research report (35%) and poster with mini-oral presentation (15%)

In this module we provide you with excellent training and education in core skills required by scientists working in the large-scale and data-based bio- and health sciences.

You will build on the knowledge and critical skills you have developed in the Level 4 and 5 modules and apply them to a problem relevant to bioscience and health sciences. You will undertake a critical review of the scientific literature in a relevant research area, allowing you to formulate a research question and an initial research hypothesis. You will also undertake data mining using a suitable publicly accessible database, allowing you to undertake your own novel analysis and interpretation with respect to your initial hypothesis.

An academic member of staff will oversee all stages of your project, but you will be required to use your scientific judgment to critically analyse and clearly present data sets to generate new knowledge from which to draw conclusions.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• apply critical analysis skills to a research topic to formulate a relevant research question and hypothesis
• examine and synthesise current primary literature relevant to a research question
• independently use a variety of generic and subject-specific software packages and online databases to retrieve complex data related to a specific research topic in biosciences and health sciences
• interrogate data and information obtained from database mining so that valid conclusions are reached
• apply skills in experimental design to identify future research directions to further develop understanding of the research topic
• communicate complex and detailed scientific information clearly and accurately via a variety of different forms, including written reports, the production of scientific figures and figure captions, and oral presentations.