MSc in Bioscience Entrepreneurship
London, United Kingdom
DURATION
1 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
31 Jul 2025
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
GBP 16,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* UK £14,100 full-time or £9,000 part-time | overseas £32,100 full-time or £16,050 part-time
Introduction
Business School for Bioscientists: a novel integrated curriculum that teaches the parts of business and management that are most relevant for applying science to real-world problems.
Programme structure
The UCL Bioscience Entrepreneurship MSc is run jointly by UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL School of Management and UCL School of Pharmacy. You’ll learn from each of these world-leading departments about how scientific knowledge can be turned into new social and economic value, to make a real-world difference. This is one of the first degrees of its kind worldwide to offer business education specifically for scientists.
Turning science into useful innovation means that scientists need to understand the language of business, such that they can interrogate the science for potential value and translate that potential into the valuation frameworks used by industry and global institutions. Bioscience innovation is often a long journey. It needs patient funding, from a wide spectrum of public sector and commercial funders. It often gets implemented in dynamic market sectors, complex health systems and under strong regulatory controls.
From the start, you will be taught by translational scientists and business people who have successfully navigated the science-business interface to create new value from ideas. UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology, the home department for this degree, is linked to Moorfields Eye Hospital. This is ranked as the leading university-research collaboration in a speciality area.
Eye scientists study everything from cell biology, genetics, digital health, artificial intelligence, and imaging, to global health and are renowned for their innovation and translational expertise. UCL School of Management is a fast-growing business school department with specialities in innovation, entrepreneurship and analytics. UCL School of Pharmacy has a long-established reputation for industry partnering and spinouts.
You’ll find yourself amongst like-minded students with a science background who share a purpose to drive innovation into a successful enterprise. Our students come from a variety of countries, and from many different scientific and medical backgrounds, but they all share ideals of how business education can empower scientists.
Using UCL’s network and reputation is also a starting point to access London’s entrepreneurial bioscience ecosystem. UCL Innovation & Enterprise runs events, incubation facilities and training programmes for emerging entrepreneurs. The university is closely connected to the Crick Institute, the clinical excellence of Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Wellcome Trust and MedCity in London.
Why study at UCL?
- In biomedical and health sciences, UCL is 1st in Europe for papers in the top 5% of their field by citation rate (2015-2018, CWTS Leiden Ranking 2020).
- UCL is ranked 8th in the world (QS 2023).
- The UCL Institute of Ophthalmology is ranked the best place in the world to study ophthalmology (CWUR Rankings by Subject 2017).
- UCL hosts more UKRI Future Leader Fellowships than any other UK university, with three academics at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology receiving the prestigious fellowships over the last three years.
- Our longstanding partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital represents the largest co-located site for eye research, education and care in the world.
- As a student, you will have access to innovative facilities, connections to a growing network of peers, and support from highly experienced and professional tutors.
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Ideal Students
This programme is for individuals who want to build their career at the bioscience-business interface, either in a start-up, as innovators in a research-based organisation, as investors or consultants, or in technology transfer.
The expertise that you gain is a combination of bioscience and broader management knowledge. These cross-disciplinary transferable skills are in demand in many different translational and policy settings.
Applicants should have either a science- or technology-based first degree, or a business-related first degree plus demonstrable interests and/or work experience in an area of bioscience innovation such as digital health. This programme is also suitable for intercalating Medical Students.
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
Curriculum
Compulsory modules
- Digital Health and AI
- Digital Opportunities
- Research and Business Case Project
- Business for Bioscience
- Research in Practice
- Science of Diseases
- Bioscience Startups
- Strategy for Emerging Technology in Life Sciences
Optional modules
- Entrepreneurial Finance
- Decision and Risk Analysis
- Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice
- Strategic Project Management
- Managing Innovation
Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability are subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.
Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. Upon successful completion of 180 credits, you will be awarded a Bioscience Innovation and Enterprise.
Program Outcome
UCL is embedded in a powerful entrepreneurial ecosystem in London. The program converges expertise from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology (IoO), the UCL School of Management, and the UCL School of Pharmacy. Students will discover many opportunities to connect with researchers and innovators to explore ideas. There is the chance to work with and learn from, world-leading scientists, clinicians, digital experts, and entrepreneurs. Graduates from this program have moved on to careers in life sciences consultancy, venture capital, science innovation, technology transfer, and start-ups.
Graduates can expect to gain:
- Deep system understanding of the challenges of new value creation from science
- Practical research and translational techniques to make knowledge transfer happen
- Ability to interrogate science to find innovative opportunities that work
- Skills in communicating potential to resource-providers
- Strategic insight into how to stage-gate the building of a new bioscience business
- An entrepreneurial mindset in leading for good change
- Expertise in navigating the values clashes between science and business
- Financial, operational, and business understanding to ask intelligent questions
- Specific communication and leadership skills for bio-business success.
Career Opportunities
The foundation of your career
Students from the first four years have gone on to careers in innovation management consultancy, venture capital, research translation, technology transfer, clinical trials, 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.
Employability
This programme trains you for a career in life sciences consultancy, investment in innovation, technology transfer, clinical trials, start-ups and spinouts, management, regulation, policy, digital health and more.
Students who complete this programme will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to set up a new venture or pursue a professional career in a wide range of biotechnology and biopharmaceutical sectors.
Networking
UCL Innovation and Enterprise is the division of UCL that offers a range of off-curriculum entrepreneurial activities, as well as incubator space, networking opportunities and practical education. Students also make contact with parts of the wider UCL and London entrepreneurial ecosystem. These connections include with start-ups, spinouts, incubators and networking hubs. Opportunities also arise through events and guest speakers.
Program Admission Requirements
Show your commitment and readiness for Grad school by taking the GRE - the most broadly accepted exam for graduate programs internationally.