This is an introductory course designed for participants with little to no previous laboratory experience. During this one-day course, participants learn transferable skills suitable for any laboratory work. The programme provides participants with an understanding of safe working practices and experience using essential equipment and protocols. Participants may attend this as a ‘stand-alone’ course or as an introduction to the BioGrad Education facility before attending one of our more advanced courses.

The Introduction to Laboratory Skills course runs from 9:30am – 4pm with an hour break for lunch. The course includes breakfast and lunch, with time for networking and seeking advice from our scientists available. The course is taught with a very low participant to tutor ratio (5:1) so it is likely that you will meet several scientists during your course. This also allows participants to spend as much time as they need to practice techniques until they are confident. We allow participants to make (safe) mistakes and correct their own work so that they learn from their own mistakes, and we encourage participants to try different approaches to solve laboratory-based problems.

This is our most popular course and runs many times a year. You will learn about laboratory safety, pipetting, serial dilutions, measuring pH, standard curves and laboratory book maintenance. The course is designed and delivered by research scientists working in both industry and academia, so we always teach the most up-to-date techniques. We alternate lecturers to keep the delivery of this course fresh and enthusiastic. Over the years, BioGrad Education lecturers have taught essential practical skills to thousands of graduate participants to help develop participants’ CV’s and improve their employability after education.

• Laboratory Health and Safety including Risk Assessments and COSHH
• Different pipettes, pipetting techniques
• Use of balances
• Serial dilutions
• Making stock solutions (Molarity)
• Calibration & measuring pH of stock solutions
• Absorbance measurement using 96-well plate reader
• Maintenance of laboratory notebooks

As the course is 100% laboratory based and assumes little to no previous laboratory experience, all levels are welcome to attend.

• Prepare and complete COSHH forms and risk assessment for any chemical independently.
• Make stock solutions and explain how to calculate the concentration to prepare stocks.
• Use the balance to weigh chemicals and prepare solutions of set concentrations.
• Use different types of pipettes safely, adjust and measure the pH of various stock solutions.
• Measure absorbance.
• Maintain accurate lab book notes.

Unlike other institutions, we do not attempt to ‘cram’ lots of different methods into a short course. This full day covers the basic skills of working in any research laboratory. These techniques are taught correctly and allow time for participants to repeat each aspect multiple times. When participants leave this course, they are confident in their ability to enter a UK laboratory and work in a safe manner using essential pieces of equipment.

This course provides all levels with a set of transferable skills and techniques in the laboratory, to progress on into jobs which will involve the use of these skills on a day-to-day basis. The skills and techniques learnt on this course also provide scientists with the tools to progress into postgraduate research projects involving these techniques.

Attendees not only gain transferable laboratory skills but also valuable insights into the research opportunities and applications of relevant techniques.

All our courses provide attendees with valuable insights into the range of careers and laboratory research opportunities available. We have links with many companies that recruit interns and graduates based on our recommendations. On completion of the course, your new skills and laboratory techniques can be endorsed by our scientists on LinkedIn, and a factual reference will be provided upon request.