Work experience can be highly beneficial to bioscience students. It prepares them for the workplace, develops confidence and practical skills and helps to clarify career goals. However, access to such opportunities is unequal. Without financial support, many students cannot afford to take time out of work or travel long distances to complete them.
A recent UK government report brings these inequalities into sharp focus, finding that the onus to gain work experience is often placed and reliant on parents and their networks, and that unpaid placements are inaccessible to some students.
The UK needs a more diverse bioscience workforce. Limiting laboratory placement access to students with the financial means narrows the talent pipeline and loses future researchers, innovators and healthcare professionals.
We have organised successful undergraduate research internships using a range of funding sources. Typically, we arrange funding for individual students or research supervisors on an ad hoc basis. Between 2021 and 2025, we had access to PhD training programme funding. This funding came from the Wellcome Trust for a project called EDESIA: Plants, Food and Health. It also came from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council via the Norwich Research Park biosciences doctoral training partnership scheme.
The Wellcome Trust funded the internships in the spirit of enhancing research culture, with a key remit of recruiting students from diverse backgrounds, which aligned with our institutional priorities.
- Spotlight guide: Opening doors to greater diversity in STEM
- How to help women thrive in STEM study and beyond
- Are STEM admissions processes hindering our diversity efforts?
To understand the value of these schemes, both students and supervisors must evaluate them. Gathering feedback during and immediately after the internship allows organisers to make changes quickly. For example, we recognised that students needed advice about the next steps in their careers, so we introduced employability skills training and support during the internships. This included CV development advice and interview training sessions delivered by university careers staff.
In addition, follow-up evaluation a year on (or even later) can determine the impact of the internships on graduate outcomes. Most students on our scheme continued on to relevant further studies or jobs, suggesting that involvement was beneficial to their career development. Note that to gather this information you will need to maintain contact with students beyond their course. We recommend asking students for permission to contact them via their personal email addresses.
Unsurprisingly, payment is an important incentive. Many organisations now pay the real living wage for internships. Along with this, we covered necessary associated costs, such as travel and accommodation.
Once they’ve completed their internships, students return for their next year of study, usually better prepared to perform experiments and analyse data, especially when tasks relate to capstone research projects. The scheme also helps students to widen their academic and professional networks beyond their course.
Widening participation to the scheme
Our priority was to prevent discrimination during the recruitment process. When we assessed applications:
- We ranked them using a specific rubric that linked directly to all the application questions. To avoid unconscious bias, all applications were anonymised, with applicants’ identities revealed to assessors only after the ranking process.
- We assigned relatively low weighting to students’ academic achievement. Assessment of applications focused on the relevance of specific skills gained from studies and extracurricular work or activities accessible to all students.
- We included tips on how to prepare a strong application to help students with less understanding of how to evidence skills or knowledge in applications.
The top-ranked candidates were shared with supervisors. If they chose not to accept the applicant, we moved on to the supervisor selected by the next best-ranked applicant.
The logistics of paid research schemes
The cost of funding paid internship schemes such as these is relatively low per student, and some professional societies, such as the Biochemical Society, the Genetics Society and the Royal Society of Biology, offer such funding. But not all students are aware of these opportunities, which can further disadvantage under-represented students.
While application processes can vary, they usually require students to identify a host organisation or academic supervisor, develop a short project proposal and submit an application form outlining the project, learning objectives and budget.
Some schemes require the host supervisor to submit the application, and, in some cases, they must be members of the sponsoring society. Applications are assessed on academic merit and project quality, and successful applicants often need to submit a final report.
Despite the benefits of such internship schemes, several funders across the UK have recently removed their support. We call for researchers to lobby for these (or similar) types of schemes to be reinstated urgently. Taking action could support a more diverse pool of researchers to enter STEM fields.
Richard Bowater is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology education at the University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Sciences. Carl R. Harrington is an associate professor and widening participation academic lead at the University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Sciences. Anne Graham is a professor and programme director of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the Norwich Biosciences Institute. Cathie Martin is a professor and group leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.
If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.
comment