BSc Biomedical Science

Why we're great.

• We are the top university in the country for providing NHS placements as part of our applied biomedical science course. Gain fast-track career progression within the NHS.
• We are ranked 2nd in the UK for biosciences (The Mail University Guide 2025).
• We are 3rd for student positivity in anatomy, physiology and pathology (National Student Survey 2025, English Broad Discipline Universities).

Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course.

Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised.

If you spend a full year abroad you'll only pay 15% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year. You won't pay any tuition fees to your host university.

Placement year

Alternatively, you can spend your third year on a placement year with an external organisation. This is usually focussed around your course, and enables you to learn about a particular sector, company or job role, apply your academic knowledge in a practical working environment, and receive inspiration for future career pathways.

Organisations our students have recently been placed with include GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Proctor & Gamble (P&G), AquaTerra, AstraZeneca, Genzyme, Reckitt Benckiser, Thermo Fisher, and Isogenica.

If you complete a placement year you'll only pay 20% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year.

Our first-year students will have the opportunity to participate in the Science Week at Public Health England (PHE) in Colindale. We have fantastic collaboration with several hospitals in the Eastern Region and beyond, and part of this collaboration is to send all of our second-year students to visit hospitals to have a clear picture about the biomedical science profession.Our final-year students have the opportunity to participate in our Employability Day at Essex, and also contribute to the IBMS Congress.

Many students choose to study biomedical science because they want to work in a biomedical sciences lab. Although there are plenty of private labs who can hire graduates, the NHS is by far the largest employer of biomedical scientists in the UK. To work full-time in an NHS lab, you will require both accreditation from the IBMS and NHS lab experience.

Our biomedical sciences courses are accredited, and we will provide you with a huge range of placement options (at around 40 different partner labs).

If you graduate without the addition of the placement year that we offer, you will need to make up that experience before you can work as a fully qualified biomedical scientist in the NHS. It is therefore a really important component and internationally recognised.

There are 44 universities in the UK that offer work-based placements, including the University of Essex. Between 2020-2022, the number of students who went on placement from all of these universities was 181, 180 and 176 respectively. This means that Essex's contribution was 18% (32/181) in 2020, 19% (34/180) in 2021 and 18% (31/176) in 2022 (IBMS 2023). As a result, we are the largest contributor of biomedical science students on placement in the country.

Our expert staff

As one of the largest schools at our University, our School of Life Sciences offers a lively, friendly and supportive environment with research-led study and high-quality teaching, where you will learn from and work alongside our expert staff.

Our research covers a wide spectrum of biology, from the cell right through to communities and ecosystems. Key academic staff for this course includes Dr Selwa Alsam, Course Director for BSc Biomedical Science, who was named 'Champion of Biomedical Science in East Anglia' by the IBMS in 2019, who is researching hospital-related infections and human microbial diseases including MRSA, wound infections and infection control.

The University of Essex has a Women's Network to support female staff and students, and our School was awarded the Athena Swan Silver Award in October 2020, which reflects the work carried out by staff in our School to continue to improve equality, including a mentorship scheme, support for postdoctoral research staff, and financial help towards childcare costs for academics who wish to attend conferences.

Specialist facilities

Recent spending by our University has allowed for major refurbishment and expansion of our School of Life Sciences:

• Work in an open and friendly department, with shared staff-student social spaces.
• Conduct your final-year research alongside academics and PhD students in shared labs.
• State-of-the-art research facilities, from protein purification, to cell culture and imaging, to molecular modelling.
• Receive training in your first year on using the Oxford Nanopore MinION, a portable handheld device that can sequence genomes in real time.
• Teaching facilities including new undergraduate laboratories.

Your future

You graduate ready to move into a wide variety of industrial and public sector careers, from the NHS to pharmaceuticals, research, health and safety, teaching.

Our students have gone on to work in a number of laboratory-based roles in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and in hospitals, clinics and healthcare companies. Others have gone on to work in sales, publishing and management, while others still have chosen to enhance their career opportunities by studying for MSc degrees or PhD degrees.

Our BSc Biomedical Science course also provides the ideal background for entry onto postgraduate medicine programmes. We have an established scheme for helping students prepare their applications and an excellent success rate with respect to students gaining places at Medical Schools throughout the country.

Other recent graduate destinations include:

• andrologist
• perfusionist
• studying medicine
• studying MSc or PhD
• working in NHS Hospitals at Cambridge, Chelmsford, Colchester, PHE in Colindale, Basildon, London, Bury St Edmunds, Harlow, Hastings, Ipswich, Norwich, Peterborough Kent, Bedford and Romford

We also work with our University's Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.

For more information on careers in biochemistry and biomedicine, visit the websites of the Biochemical Society and the Institute of Biomedical Science.

"The best part of my course was the support I received from Essex in completing my placement year, enabling me to jump straight into work after graduating. I have become increasingly grateful for the quality of modules on offer as each has proven to be extremely useful and relevant in the workplace. I am a molecular pathology and genetics biomedical scientist, where my main role is to perform serological and PCR techniques for the detection, confirmation and sequencing of infectious pathogens."

Vladislava Kutukova, BSc Biomedical Science, 2020