About the Center

Programs

Secrets of the Sequence
Videos/Lessons

Virginia Governor’s School
for Life Sciences and Medicine

Rice Center Outreach
Activities

Bioinformatics and
Bioengineering Summer
Institute

Summer Workshops for
Teachers

VCU Internships LS
Entrepreneurship

Partnerships

Maymont-VCU Discovery
Institute

Science Museum of
Virginia-VCU Mini-Med Program

Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and VCU Center for Environmental Studies Summer Programs

Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens-VCU Herbaria

Life Sciences and Religion Community Forum of Central Virginia

Publications

VCU Life Sciences Surveys

Life Sciences Career Guide

Guide to careers
www.lscareers.org

As our world becomes complex in nature, so do our lives. The mysteries that arise from life’s complexities require us to take a unique approach to finding answers. Who best to find the answers? Professionals from various disciplines — even those fields traditionally considered the humanities — are integrating their knowledge to find solutions to some of the most intricate mysteries of life.

All of these disciplines apply the scientific approach — observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation — to the study of the properties that distinguish living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter — metabolism, growth, reproduction and adaptation to the environment. The following examples show how some professionals fit in the Life Sciences picture:

A philosopher: Bioethics

A chemical or electrical engineer: Biochips

A molecular biologist: Functional genomics

A computer scientist: Bioinformatics

A historian: Paradigm shifts in realtime

A mathematician: Information theory

A pediatrician: Impact of new molecular theories

A business scholar: Biotech companies

For a copy of this Guide to Life Science Careers, please call VCU Life Sciences at (804) 827-5600.