Three Reasons to Study a Master's in Ecological and Environmental Sciences at Imperial
Choosing where to study for a postgraduate qualification is a decision that will help define your career opportunities and transform your future. Here are three reasons why you should study a Master’s in ecological and environmental sciences at Imperial College London.
Become part of a beautiful, ecologically-rich campus
Our ecological and environmental sciences courses are based at our Silwood Park campus, a rural environment with a huge range of natural habitats including grasslands, agricultural fields, woodland and a lake. We have captive mosquito and sparrow populations, and beehive colonies, and can model biodiversity and ecosystems that occur around the world. As a Master’s student, you will get the chance to explore these habitats in depth through a week-long field trip at the beginning of your degree.
Our facilities at Silwood Park are world-leading in terms of both field and lab work, and include:
- Wolfson Genomics Laboratory – containing advanced sequencing genomics facilities
- State-of-the-art microbial lab offering robotic pipetting
- Pond mesocosms: a set of 200 giant buckets used as ponds which can be heated to reflect climate change, for example, or to include specific species or nutrients.
Studying at our Silwood campus also puts you at the heart of a diverse and friendly community of like-minded students, with many opportunities to connect. We hold an annual music festival SilFest, a Christmas party, and a Bugs, Birds and Beasts Day – which gives you the chance to get a taste of public engagement as 600 members of the public descend on campus – as well as a weekly series of external speakers and social evenings.
Silfest
Silfest
Bugs, Birds and Beasts Day
Bugs, Birds and Beasts Day
Home to some of science’s biggest breakthroughs
At Silwood Park, you’ll be following in the footsteps of researchers who’ve uncovered some of the greatest fundamental scientific breakthroughs of modern times. These include the first epidemiology disease modelling and the basics of chaos theory in the mid-20th century, and our Centre for Population Biology’s first controlled observation of microcosms which transformed the world’s approach to ecology. More recently:
- Professor Vincent Savolainen discovered the first confirmed example of sympatric speciation: an example used in ecology textbooks around the world
- Professor Austin Burt developed the gene drive theory which underpins today’s massive global effort to control malaria by eliminating its mosquito host.
Our research is ranked top ten in the UK (Geography and Environmental Studies Unit of Assessment) in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 and, as a Masters’ student, you’ll be part of our dynamic research culture. You’ll spend the majority of your time in practicals, whether that’s conducting above-ground animal surveys, collecting soil samples, or using computer coding to solve problems. You may even play your own part in Imperial’s important evolutionary research – like students on our Ecology, Evolution and Conservation MSc who go to Lundy Island and contribute to our decades-long tracking study of its isolated sparrow population.
Route to a range of fascinating careers
A Master’s degree can lead to a huge variety of jobs. Many past students have undertaken a PhD, while a large number join conservation NGOs, environmental consultancies and carbon restoration companies around the world. Other go into roles at multinationals such as JP Morgan and Hitachi.
Whether you study an MRes or MSc, you’ll gain skills in data analysis, basic computing, bioinformatics and genomics which are in high demand in academia and industry. You’ll benefit from Imperial’s exceptional expertise in quantitative data analysis and interpretation, and our long heritage of teaching excellence: one of the seminal textbooks you’ll study is The R Book which was written by former Imperial academic Professor Michael Crawley.
You’ll also take part in our unique Master's student conference towards the end of your degree where you’ll present your work in a formal environment – which is excellent preparation if you’re aiming for a career in science.
Discover more reasons to study ecological and environmental sciences at Imperial and browse our diverse range of ecological and environmental Master's degrees.
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