Natural Sciences with a Year in Industry

Natural sciences is a degree designed for students whose curiosity does not stop at the border between disciplines. The world's most significant challenges, from climate change and food security to pandemic preparedness and sustainable energy, require scientists who can integrate knowledge across biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and earth sciences rather than working within a single narrow speciality. Natural sciences allows you to develop deep expertise in individual disciplines while also building the ability to make connections between them, a combination that is both intellectually ambitious and practically important.

At King's College London this four-year, full-time programme includes a year in industry, giving you direct professional experience in a scientific or research organisation before you complete your studies. You will engage with real-world problems that require interdisciplinary thinking, developing both specialist knowledge and the broader scientific literacy needed to understand how different fields inform one another. The year in industry provides invaluable professional context, exposes you to how science is practised outside academia, and significantly strengthens your employability.

Natural sciences graduates are sought after across research, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, environmental science, government science advisory roles, education, science communication and data science. The ability to work across disciplinary boundaries is consistently identified as a quality that employers in science and technology most value and struggle to find. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in a specific discipline, taking the broad scientific foundation the degree provides into more specialist research careers.

Others move into science policy, technology consulting or roles in the innovation economy where intellectual breadth and the ability to integrate knowledge from multiple fields are essential.