Are you interested in life sciences jobs? Are you confused about what your options in the life science field actually are?
About 5% of the United States population work in the life sciences field, so there is a lot of variety to understand. It’s totally understandable if you don’t know exactly what you want to do in such a diverse field.
But don’t worry — we can help! Here are some great life sciences jobs you may want to look into for your future career.
What Are Life Sciences?
Before we go through life science careers, we need to go through what life sciences actually are. Simply, life sciences are sciences that study living things. These living things can include people, animals, plants, trees, and the environment we all live in. Some life science disciplines include the following:
- Botany
- Kinesiology
- Anatomy
- Neuroscience
- Astrobiology
- Ecology
- Paleontology
There are tons of other types of life sciences under the big umbrella, and every single one is important and fascinating. Next, we’ll go through why life sciences are important!
Why Are Life Sciences Important?
Firstly, life sciences are important because they are the way we understand the human body, its environment, and factors that affect it. Life sciences are how we figure out how we work, and how to protect ourselves from diseases and other dangers. Life sciences also help us make the best decisions for other aspects of our lives, such as in public policy.
The life sciences industry can also help us make many other improvements in our world, and help us address major ongoing issues like racial injustice. The implications of life sciences are truly limitless when applied and considered fully!
Epidemiologists
Do you enjoy studying patterns and trends in disease spread and medicine? Epidemiology might be the field for you. Epidemiology is becoming even more important as pandemics continue to become more prominent (including the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS, and Swine flu) because epidemiology is used to figure out how diseases spread and how the spread can be prevented in the future.
So, it’s becoming a rising profession that you can get in on the ground floor of. Becoming an epidemiologist means joining a field that’s both lucrative and important to our world.
Bioinformatician and Biotechnologist
Are you interested in both biology and technology? There are so many different ways you can incorporate both into a life science job, but becoming a bioinformatician or a biotechnologist are two of the best ways. Biotechnologists look for ways to incorporate technology into healthcare fields, while bioinformaticians use information technology to improve different research in biological and healthcare fields.
Both these jobs will require quite a bit of education (at least a graduate-level degree), but they are groundbreaking fields that are important for modernizing healthcare, medicine, and other related areas of interest that help improve the lives of human beings on an everyday basis.
Environmental Scientists and Conservationists
Are you worried about the effects climate change is having on our planet? Why don’t you get into the field of environmental science! Environmental science covers a wide range of different science coverage that revolve around the environment and the issues that face the environment.
If you’re not interested in straight environmental science, you can also get into conservationism for a more narrow approach. A conservationist works to protect wild animals and the environment with conservation measures.
You can work as a conservation scientist, which would do more lab and theoretical work, or a conservation worker, which would do more practical work.
Environmental sciences and conservationism both help us protect the future of our planet, so they’re both very worthwhile jobs to try out!
Microbiologists
Are you interested in the study of teeny-tiny things? How about teeny-tiny microbes? Microbiologists study things like fungi, viruses, and parasites, so it’s perfect for people who are interested in the micro-levels of our world.
Microbiologists figure out how these organisms interact with our world and how they influence our lives. If any of this sounds appealing, then microbiology is a field you should definitely try out today and consider for your profession in the future.
More Life Science Jobs You May Want To Check Out
Of course, we can’t go through every single life science job in detail. There are so many more out there! Here are a few life science jobs that you may want to look further into for your future endeavours:
- Medical doctor (or other jobs that would require going to medical school)
- Science writer or science journalist
- Dentist (or other fields that would require going to dental school)
- Researcher or Academic
- Computational biologist
- Physician associate
- Industrial Pharmacist
- Soil scientist
- Veterinarian (or related jobs that would require going to veterinarian school)
- Laboratory technician
- Zookeeper
There are many, many more options out there. You’ll just need to explore what’s right for you and your interests!
These Life Sciences Jobs Barely Scratch The Surface
These are just some of the many, many life sciences jobs that are available to you. Make sure that you know what you’re getting into when you explore the field of life science, and that you have the qualifications and academic background needed to succeed in the field. That way, you won’t be biting off more than you can chew!
Are you interested reading more about life sciences, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics), and other related topics? Make sure to head over to some of our other blogs today!