Video transcript: Masters Research at the University of Leeds

Transcript for the video embedded on the Beth Peacock’s profile page.

[Music]

[A science lab with equipment and students in the background. A student walks in, wearing a white lab coat and sits down in front of the camera. Text on screen says the student is Beth Peacock, Msc Biopharmaceutical Development with 12 month work placement.]

[Beth speaks, throughout which there are various shots of the lab and teaching facilities, students in lectures and Beth studying with friends in modern informal study space, and delivering a presentation.]

My graduate degree was biological sciences and yeah I just got to know the University and knew that they cared about how they teach you.
A lot of the time, when I was doing the graduate degree, you would talk about antibiotics or chemotherapy which is more small molecule drugs. But gene therapy was something new and you get to do some really good things.

You're developing a drug and making something safe to make someone better. It's something that I think is the future of science, so I wanted to get involved.

So, as a postgraduate you do a lot more independent learning. A lot of the lectures they'll tell you a big broad overview of everything, but then your assignment’s specific, so you would have to go away and research these things.

A lot of the different assignments were looking at very different things from developing a business plan to looking at how you would design a biobetter drug. And then in contrast you had other modules where you would be working in a group with people from different masters. 

There was a lot of presentations it had to give, so you kind of came out of your comfort zones.

I've learned how to be more confident, more independent and just believe in myself.

The supervisor is someone who's there to help you throughout your postgraduate studies. This isn't just relating to what you're being taught and what you're learning, it's also they're there for you if you've got any problems outside of university and teaching.

I think my masters has prepared me a lot. I know about lots of different areas that you wouldn't normally know about outside of science.

I guess it's taught you to be confident talk to people from external companies and in general just work with people from different backgrounds.

I've got a job here at Covance afterwards and I do think without this Masters I wouldn't have been able to get there, because I've learnt so many things and I've had the opportunity to be trained in lots of different techniques. 

So this course has taught you not just the theories behind things but about the actual industry and the drug development process. 

Especially coming into industry, you really see the value of being taught about all those different things.