As a summary, this course is suitable for anyone who:

• Wishes to explore the science-business interface for ideas and inspiration
• Wants to pivot to working with science in a business setting such as in investment or consultancy
• Feels they would like to be a new venture creator and lead their own bioscience-based enterprise at some point in the future

Compulsory modules

• Bioscience Startups

This module aims to provide students with a substantial understanding of what defines and shapes a start-up, appraising the academic perspective (how, when and why one should form a start-up), how to value your asset(s), differences between ‘know-how’ and intellectual property and will place this analysis in the contexts of the investor perspective, financial management and company legal obligations.

Students will consider sources of investment such as venture capital, how a start-up is structured with regard to shareholders, directors and employees, the various responsibilities of each, how successive rounds of investment work, and the impact on the control of the company and decision-making, and the inevitability of dilution of equity. We will look at key inflexion points, what these mean and their impact on company value, decisions to go to an initial public offering, or possible sale to a big pharma/biotech, with a basic understanding of the processes involved.

• Business for Bioscience (School of Management)

The module sits at the interface between bioscience and business, covering the elements of management science that are most relevant to bioscience. Bioscience often has a long, complex route from innovation to implementation. Hence the content includes integration with practice, bioscience firms, medical behaviours, as well as the pillars of intellectual property, regulation and investment choices. How to gain stakeholder support is also included, for example with regular pitch sessions that ask students to communicate science eg departmental research - to different audiences.

• Digital Health and AI / Digital Opportunities in Bioscience Entrepreneurship

Both of these modules are compulsory but students only pick one to complete in Term One.

Digital Health and AI

The module will provide students with systematic knowledge and practical application of digital technology to support health-real-life information provision. Students will learn about the evolving digital health landscape. There will be a focus on key technologies that will drive digital transformation such as telemedicine, electronic healthcare records, interoperability and AI (artificial intelligence). Students will get an in-depth understanding of current and emerging approaches, concepts and issues in digital health, including online networks to provide informational and psychological support to empower patients, big data, the future of privacy, the ethics of data collection in everyday life, as well as the impact of mobile and digital technology on health and wellbeing.

Digital Opportunities in Bioscience Entrepreneurship

This module is focused on acquiring a substantial understanding of the development of digital IP and the extent of the current landscape, the development cycle abyss, and methods to overcome it. Other topics will include prototyping methods, translational schemes and finally conversion to functional products. These topics will be presented in a way that the learner would be able to critique future products and assess properly what stage they are at, and what methods would be needed to move this idea over the abyss to a functional product. This process will be covered in multiple parts to cover the development of data analysis software, database development and curation, digital health (telemedicine) and robotics and other device development.

Digital health has a very important legal framework, eg what is patentable vs trademark vs copyright and what these actually mean legally are highly variable. Students will also get a basic overview of different developmental platforms such as Matlab, Python, C++, Tensorflow, SQL and R, what a project is present in each means for process in the developmental path and how this can be improved to make a commercial product.

• Research and Business Case Project

This module is intended to allow students a substantial research-based project in which to apply and refine the skills and knowledge developed through the modules of the programme.

Students will identify a proposal in the context of contemporary research and analysis of both business and science-based priorities, outline a research model for development (considering as relevant to the project; science, pharma, technology and data and associated processes and methodologies), and then appraise and present their findings in the context of business start-ups, financial and market-based drivers.

Project proposals have the capacity to encompass a wide range of translational applications, and the project work encourages students to investigate their own enterprise capacity independently and may in some cases identify projects which have immediate developmental potential.

• Research in Practice

This module aims to develop in students the knowledge and skills required for conducting research with clinical populations in workplace contexts. The module addresses essential issues of concern for clinical research including ethical and scientific quality of standards, public engagement in research, and planning for and evaluating research impact. The module brings together students' research interests with knowledge of research methods gained from companion modules and new learning in clinical research governance, to support the transition from research ideas into concrete plans.

• Science of Diseases

This module aims to provide a substantial understanding of the scope of the science driving the translational biomedicine field. This includes our current state of knowledge about the biological mechanisms that underlie the most relevant disease as well as the currently available options for diagnosing and treating such diseases.

UCL is ranked 9th in the world overall (QS World University Rankings 2023).

Upon completion of this programme, you will have:

• An understanding of how bioscience intersects with business
• Knowledge, skills and mindset that support entrepreneurial activity
• A bespoke business education that focuses on scientific innovation
• Exemplary boundary-spanning communication and leadership skills
• Understanding of the ethical, regulatory and legal constraints around research in businesses based on living entities
• Opportunity recognition skills to identify potential life science opportunity
• Awareness of how new venture creation works in organisations, the priorities, practices and purpose behind the drivers for organisational innovation

Students from the first two years have gone on to careers in management consultancy, venture capital, research translation, start-ups and spinouts, policy, PhD programmes and more. Science has achieved new prominence since the pandemic. Our boundary-spanning innovative students have many options in the UK and globally for purposeful careers.