What jobs can biochemistry majors achieve?

Hi Alyssa,

I have a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular biology and there's a surprising amount you can do with this degree. It has skills that are easily leveraged into a variety of different careers. The most obvious potential careers are within STEM fields, and typically result in further schooling. With a degree in Biochemistry you could apply to medical school or graduate school and get your Master's or PhD. There is even nursing school or Physician Assistant school for other clinical possibilities. Upon graduating from medical school, nursing school, or PA school you can work with patients in a clinical setting. Upon graduating from graduate school with either your master's or PhD you can go on to do research in an academic setting for various labs, in cancer or neuroscience or immunology or any number of fields. Eventually you could become a professor and run your own lab, carving out a specific niche and becoming a master of your field. Or you could switch to industry and work with a pharmaceutical company developing and testing new drugs to treat patients.

Besides this you could work in the STEM field as a research coordinator, planning out and conducting clinical trials, or you could work in public health, looking at diseases and how they affect different populations. There's a huge possibility of combination with your other interests. Social Justice and welfare could align well with public health, studying how disease affects disenfranchised communities and how best to assist those communities. If you like to draw you could even look into medical illustration, or medical photography. There's a ton of really specific jobs out there for your interests.

Some people switch out of STEM and use their degree for law school or regulation, working with government agencies to oversee how people perform experiments. Some work as advisers for major Fortune 500 companies.

The most important thing to know is a degree in Biochemistry doesn't necessarily limit you to one path, but the options out there can be overwhelming. Most people end up going on for more schooling and staying in academics, working in a research lab, finding cures for diseases or working to understand something better.

To the question of what to do with a biochem degree - In your major studies you had biochem, organic, chem, physical chem, physics, lots of math, genetics, immunology, biology, maybe plant biochem .. all of these things can be avenues of their own. The obvious are academics basic research or industrial product manufacture. Industrial paths can be bio-therapeutic drugs, vaccines, cookies to shampoos. Biochemistry is the study of things at their most basic level (ok physicists might argue) and how to think analytically. There are opportunities in government (CDC, epidemiology, disease control), military (vaccines, combat medicine, third world disease control), medicine (hospital labs, clinical chemistry, pharmacology), food and beverage, industrial enzymology. The biotech industry can offer careers in discovery research, process development and scale up to manufacturing plant level. There are also specialty groups like pharmacology, toxicology, pathology, analytical chemistry, quality assurance, regulatory. All these groups need a basic understanding of science and more important scientific methodology.

I would recommend maybe in lieu of a graduate degree add a minor in math (statistics is huge in science and medicine), PLC coding (industry is begging for automation wizards), ethics, immunology, chemical engineering, business, or legal. Anytime you can stack talents it's a plus. One thing I'm seeing in large scale manufacturing is the incorporation of AI. This is just off the top of my head from 40 years of experience. Hope this helps.

Alyssa

Hi

While I have not recruited specifically for professionals with Biochemistry experience, I have found that the best way to find out about any career is to go online and ask. I used Google. Here is what I found so far to get you started. If you look at multiple sites look for consistencies in what they say. This should help you feel more comfortable that the information you are reading is pretty accurate.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reach back out.

Carol

Biochemistry Major. Description: A program that focuses on the scientific study of the chemistry of living systems, their fundamental chemical substances and reactions, and their chemical pathways and information transfer systems, with particular reference to carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids.

Biochemistry Major

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