Drug Discovery Research Project (F1607)

90 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring and summer teaching

On this module, you’ll spend a significance amount of time in a research laboratory, designing and carrying out a series of experiments to answer a specific medicinal chemistry question.

Through this work, you’ll gain hands-on experience of the practical skills required to be a professional drug discovery chemist. These skills include the synthesis, purification and analysis and new molecules, each with the potential to be the starting (or end!) point for the discovery of a new therapy.

During your research, you’ll be supported through formal and informal PI/group meetings and by targeted training (for example use of equipment and software). You will gain experience in how to draft research proposals, and present new data both as a formal scientific presentation and in an extended thesis. On completion of your project, you will have a deep understanding of the practical aspects of the drug discovery process.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 900 hours of work. This breaks down into about 648 hours of contact time and about 252 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.