Designing your final-year project

In this blog post Dorsa Moezzi (third-year BSc Biotechnology student) discusses her final year project and what she hopes to get out of it.

I’m Dorsa, a soon-to-be-graduate Biotechnology student, and I’m facing what most students think of as the “final boss” of university: the final year project.

In essence, it is independent research supported by a supervisor, that you are assigned to, or can self-arrange. There are different types of projects students in the School of Biological Science can undertake, such:

• lab-based
• field-based
• bioinformatics and biomodelling
• environmental sustainability
• bioscience stakeholder opinions
• science communication
• life science enterprise
• the history of science, technology and medicine project.

You’re spoilt for choice!

At the end of Year 2, you provide your top three choices and anxiously wait to find out what the 40-credit unit that makes or breaks your degree will be. I opted for a lab-based one and was lucky enough to get my choice of project and supervisor.

In fact, I self-arranged a project with a researcher from the Manchester Fungal Infection Group. I was looking for a very specific research topic to pursue, and I knew it would be unlikely that I would be randomly assigned that, so I took matters into my own hands.

Finding a supervisor

From the beginning of Year 2, my passion for microbiology flourished. Units like Fundamentals of Bacteriology and Principles of Infectious Disease piqued my interest and made me particularly concerned about antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a healthcare disaster culminating, and I want to be part of the solution – a hero in a white lab coat.

From the research I did as part of the Year 2 Science Communication module, I deemed CRISPR-Cas9, the revolutionary gene-editing tool, to be an under-researched method for tackling this issue. That’s why I spent hours looking at every researcher at the University on ResearchGate to find my supervisor, who specializes in fungal antibiotic resistance and has worked with CRISPR-Cas9 before.

Designing my project

After reaching out to the researcher, who kindly agreed to be my supervisor, the plan was set in motion, and my project was set: putting a CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) editing platform in Aspergillus fumigatus to repress those nasty resistance genes.

In semester 1, as part of the 40-credit project unit, I wrote a four-page paper on CRISPR editing methods as background which will form the introduction of my final report, the equivalent of a dissertation.

In semester 2, so far, my supervisor and I have designed my project and started to produce the CRISPRi platform. Already, I have learned an immense amount from being in the lab and getting to play around with machines, solutions and microorganisms.

From hard skills like polymerase chain reaction (PCR) prep to soft skills like experimental design, this project has provided great experience and CV material. I’m very excited to see how it unfolds. And, as nerdy as it sounds, I can’t wait to write my report, which I’m sure to be very proud of!

Final semester advice

To anyone who will pursue a project in the coming years, I highly encourage you to put great thought into how you want to spend your final semester at university, and who you want to be guiding you through that journey. Self-arranging my project is one of the best initiatives I’ve taken, and it has only reinforced my interests and future plans.

Lastly, be grateful for this opportunity. The final year project isn’t a chore or just a requirement to graduate. It is a privilege to undertake new research with leading world scientists. Make the most of it.

Find out more about studying Biosciences at The University of Manchester.