Abstract:

According to the current academic plans, the End-of-Degree (EOD) project is the last subject undertaken by undergraduate students in different Science Degrees at the University of León: Biological Sciences, Biotechnology, and Veterinary Sciences. Similarly, the End-Of-Master (EOM) project is required for a master student to finally obtain the Master Degree. Since 2012 the Animal Breeding research group at the University of León (ULE) in Spain, known as MEGA research group (from the Spanish name of “Mejora Genética Animal”) has supervised a total of 10 EOD and 3 EOM projects. Considering globally, nine of these projects were planned as a short research study whereas the four others involved the review of a suggested topic related with the animal genetics, biotechnology or animal breeding fields. The research related projects are offered to students as an opportunity to have contact with an active research project of the research group and apply the scientific method to a question related with the influence of genes on the phenotypic variation shown by traits of economic interest in livestock species. In the last years, the involvement of the MEGA research group in projects involving the analysis of Third Generation Sequencing (NGS) data has determined that seven out of the nine students undertaking research related projects have had the opportunity to have an initial introduction to the Bioinformatics, one of the fields that nowadays is offering ample job opportunities to young scientists. Whereas this kind of projects may suppose an extra effort for both students and supervisors in relation to the classical review project, at the end of the research project, in general, students do a positive evaluation of the opportunity provided mainly because they consider that the bioinformatics skills learnt will give an added value to their degree when facing their first job hunting. A short survey has been conducted across the EOD and EOM students supervised by the teachers of the ULE MEGA group in the last years to assess their view in relation to the potential of their projects to explore job opportunities, especially in relation to research and science transference. Through this survey we also want to assess whether the type of project undertaken as an EOD or EOM, research or review, may have an impact on their future decisions related to initiate a research career or the development of knowledge transfer activities associated to both public and private organizations.

Keywords:

End-of-Degree project, End-of-Master, research, review.