Handbook

Professional biologists with the skills to design experiments and analyse data are essential for identifying and responding to society’s urgent environmental, biomedical, and social challenges. This unit provides the approaches and tools that enable curious and creative minds to collect, analyse, and understand complex biological data. Drawing on a variety of examples from biology, genetics, and the biomedical sciences, we focus first on constructing impactful and testable research questions and designing rigorous experiments to match. We then introduce modern data science methods, using the R statistical environment, that make exploring, visualising, and analysing complex biological data as fast and as fluent as possible. Throughout the unit we work in small groups to promote hands-on problem solving and peer-assisted debate, culminating in a student-led research project on a variety of biological and genetic topics. The combination of training in critical thinking, data science using R, communication, and team work, will provide you with a demonstrable skill set that is highly-valued in a variety of traditional and emerging scientific careers, or for further undergraduate and honours study.