Course details

Summary

Help improve human or animal health through creating new or more effective drugs and medicines. Learn the research processes used to identify drug targets and develop new therapeutics.

Your studies will combine the biological sciences with chemistry, giving you the skills to target, design, synthesise, create and assess new drugs. You'll also learn about protecting intellectual property, assessing the financial viability of drugs and the pre-clinical and clinical trial processes.

Tailor your studies to your strengths, interests and career goals. You'll learn a mix of academic and practical skills that are closely aligned to the needs of industry.

The Master of Drug Discovery and Development is best suited to very able students with backgrounds in chemistry or relevant life-science subjects such as biochemistry, biomedical science, pharmacy or pharmacology. It is an intensive one-year taught programme, unique in New Zealand.

Careers

You'll have the broad skills you need to work in drug discovery in companies, universities, research institutes or with drug regulatory authorities. You might work within the pharmaceutical, bioanalytical or chemical industries, or take your skills into nutraceuticals or agrichemicals.

Entry criteria

Applicants must satisfy the following:

• A Bachelor's degree in Chemistry or relevant life-science subjects such as Biochemistry, Biomedical Science, Pharmacy or Pharmacology, with an average grade of B+
• To be accepted by the programme director as capable of proceeding with the proposed course of study

Other English Language requirements:

• IELTS: minimum overall score of 6.5 with no sub-score below 6.0
• TOEFL: minimum score of 90 for the internet-based test with a minimum of 20 in writing
• Pearson Test of English: minimum score of 65 (with a ‘Communicative’ score of not less than 58)