BIOM30003: Biomedical Science Research Project

Literature review (due early in semester to see if you're on the right track) (0%)
Oral report (15 min) or poster presentation due towards end of semester (30%)
Written report (~3000 words) due end of semester (60%)
Supervisor assessment of research competence, based on student's contributions to project design and completion (10%)

I would absolutely recommend this subject to anyone that's interested in the idea of doing honours or following research in some way in their future life. I used this subject to gain a taste of what it was like working in a lab to see if honours was a good alternative to medicine for me personally. I left the subject with a much stronger understanding of how research actually works and also gained real scientific skills that I hadn't throughout the first two years of my degree. Namely, by being a part of lab meetings, journal clubs, and having to write up a written report as per standards in my field, it felt like I was truly engaging in science, which you're only provided a diluted and dumbed-down version of through the first two years of biomedicine/science.

If you're not at all interested in honours, it goes without saying that you should definitely not do this subject - it is not easy, and just because it has no classes doesn't mean it's a bludge. This subject demands discipline and motivation to carry out your experimental design, because you'll probably spend the majority of your time working by yourself or carrying out tedious or trivial jobs to make your project perfect. If you're not genuinely interested in your project, it will definitely be obvious to not only your supervisor, but to whoever you present your oral/written report to.

People that want to do this subject need to have "excellent results" in discipline-relevant subjects (typically H2A or above) and permission from the departmental coordinator before they are enrolled. What this means is that if you're interested, you really need to be prepared early and have all of the administrative stuff ready to go well before your project starts. For example, I used semester 2 of 2017 to find an appropriate lab and contact the relevant coordinators to see if my project was appropriate for the subject.

In terms of assessment and what you get out of the subject, your supervisor will play a large role, so make sure they're someone you get along with decently well. In particular, your supervisor can be responsible for up to 60% of your grade, so it's important you're on the same page with them. The oral presentation is unlike anything offered in level 1 or 2 subjects and as such it can be pretty difficult. I'd recommend starting work on it early and discussing with lab members about your progress. It is not something that you can freely improvise and you'll need to do some practice runs before you get it right.

The subject experience will also differ greatly between people, because no two people will have the same project. Similarly, there are projects from a wide range of different departments within the faculty, so I've kept this review to be fairly broad.

tl;dr: This is a great subject because it allows you to credit real lab experience towards your degree, and facilitates learning real scientific skills. If you're interested in research or you're contemplating honours, I'd highly recommend it.

No classes

n/a, coordinated by Joel Bornstein

No exam

4.5 out of 5

No textbooks but you'll need to be in touch with your supervisor or a lab member about finding relevant literature to your research topic.

There are no classes for this subject, but you're expected to put in approximately 10 hrs of work a week, or a total of 170 hrs for the entire subject.

Summer 2018

H1