• Question: What different types of scientist can you become? What qualifications are needed?

    Asked by Emma to Craig, Flavia, Giuditta, Jack, Sheona on 11 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by syeda.begum, bLAU.
    • Photo: Giuditta Perversi

      Giuditta Perversi answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      Soooo many types!
      It’s even difficult to list them because the research is really specialised. For instance even though I am a chemist I wouldn’t be able to perform the research of every lab we have set up in the department, because I specialised in another field.

      If you go in big branches of science, big subjects are Engineering (really into applications and building stuff), Biology (for living things, being it animals, humans, plants and the like), Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Geology. Medicine is a bit more complicated, but you can land into research from there as well.
      It can happen that the more you specialise in a field, the more they overlap because you can arrive to the same point from different starts! For instance, in the field of material science at extreme conditions that I work in, we are mostly Chemists and Physicists, but there are some Geologists as well and we have a big Engineering chunk of the group that is all into creating new equipment for us to use!

      From my experience, it’s good to start from something “generic”, instead of starting your undergraduate on something that it’s already very specific.
      If you start with a broader education, you leave yourself more choices about what you can do while you figure out what you like the most…and you won’t be totally under-qualified if you want to change type of work at some point!

      In the UK system, as far as I know, you need to have A-levels relevant to science in the high-school, and then it’s really good to go the university!
      After 3 years you will qualify as a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) and it’s good enough to start working in labs and in industry and in some case even swapping to a PhD. If you want to specialise further, taking a Master of Science is good because you will learn more stuff to apply for better jobs or PhDs!

    • Photo: Jack Carlyle

      Jack Carlyle answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      For everything you can imagine in the world, and in the universe, there is probably a scientist who studies it. There are almost limitless possibilities as to what type of scientist you can become. If you can think about something, you can do science about it! The qualifications will always vary, but if you can study something which is close to it at University, that’s always a good start. A Maths A-level will usually be useful, along with one or two other science subjects maybe.

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