How to become a Biologist 2024

Biologist Research or study basic principles of plant and animal life, such as origin, relationship, development, anatomy, and functions.

Biologist is Also Know as

In different settings, Biologist is titled as

Aquatic Biologist
Aquatic Scientist
Biological Scientist
Biologist
Botanist
Horticulturist
Marine Biologist
Research Biologist
Research Scientist
Scientist

Education and Training of Biologist

Biologist is categorized in Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Biologist

Extensive skill, knowledge, and experience are needed for these occupations. Many require more than five years of experience. For example, surgeons must complete four years of college and an additional five to seven years of specialized medical training to be able to do their job.

Education Required for Biologist

Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).

Degrees Related to Biologist

Training Required for Biologist

Employees may need some on-the-job training, but most of these occupations assume that the person will already have the required skills, knowledge, work-related experience, and/or training.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Biologist in different industries are

What Do Biologist do?

Develop and maintain liaisons and effective working relations with groups and individuals, agencies, and the public to encourage cooperative management strategies or to develop information and interpret findings.
Program and use computers to store, process, and analyze data.
Collect and analyze biological data about relationships among and between organisms and their environment.
Study aquatic plants and animals and environmental conditions affecting them, such as radioactivity or pollution.
Communicate test results to state and federal representatives and general public.
Identify, classify, and study structure, behavior, ecology, physiology, nutrition, culture, and distribution of plant and animal species.
Represent employer in a technical capacity at conferences.
Plan and administer biological research programs for government, research firms, medical industries, or manufacturing firms.
Research environmental effects of present and potential uses of land and water areas, determining methods of improving environmental conditions or such outputs as crop yields.
Measure salinity, acidity, light, oxygen content, and other physical conditions of water to determine their relationship to aquatic life.
Teach or supervise students and perform research at universities and colleges.
Supervise biological technicians and technologists and other scientists.
Study basic principles of plant and animal life, such as origin, relationship, development, anatomy, and function.
Study and manage wild animal populations.
Prepare requests for proposals or statements of work.
Prepare plans for management of renewable resources.
Develop methods and apparatus for securing representative plant, animal, aquatic, or soil samples.
Study reactions of plants, animals, and marine species to parasites.
Develop pest management and control measures, and conduct risk assessments related to pest exclusion, using scientific methods.
Prepare technical and research reports, such as environmental impact reports, and communicate the results to individuals in industry, government, or the general public.
Review reports and proposals, such as those relating to land use classifications and recreational development, for accuracy, adequacy, or adherence to policies, regulations, or scientific standards.
Write grant proposals to obtain funding for biological research.

Qualities of Good Biologist

Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.

Tools Used by Biologist

Agar plates
Automated microscopes
Automatic pipetters
Benchtop centrifuges
Benchtop lyophilizers
Bioreactors
Biosafety cabinets
Bunsen burners
Carbolite ovens
Centrifugal evaporators
Conductivity meters
Deoxyribonucleic acid DNA sequencers
Desktop computers
Digestion units
Digital cameras
Dip nets
Dissecting microscopes
Distillation units
Electron microscopes
Electronic precision balances
Electrophoresis chambers
Erlenmeyer flasks
Fermenters
Fluid scintillation counters
Fluorescence microscopes
French presses
Fume hoods
Gas autoclaves
Gas chromatographs GC
General purpose laboratory test tubes
Glass beakers
Glass burets
Glass graduated cylinders
Glass washers
Global positioning system GPS receivers
Handheld digital thermometers
Heated magnetic stirrers
Heated stir plates
High pressure liquid chromatograph HPLC equipment
Homogenizers
Inoculating loops
Inverted compound microscopes
Laboratory analytical balances
Laboratory bulb syringes
Laboratory dropping pipettes
Laboratory forceps
Laboratory funnels
Laboratory hot plates
Laboratory microwave ovens
Laminar flow cabinets
Laptop computers
Liquid handling robots
Luminometers
Mainframe computers
Mechanical laboratory incubators
Mercury barometers
Micropipettes
Microscope digital cameras
Microscope slides
Microtiter plate readers
Microtomes
Multiwell microplates
Navigational compasses
Optical compound microscopes
Orbital shaking water baths
Pasteur pipettes
Personal computers
Petri dishes
pH indicators
Phosporimagers
Plankton nets
Plastic cuvettes
Plastic laboratory tubing
Polymerase chain reaction PCR equipment
Portable dataloggers
Propane jet freezers
Refrigerated benchtop centrifuges
Respirometers
Safety glasses
Safety gloves
Safety goggles
Salinity meters
Scanning electron microscopes SEM
Scanning laser confocal microscopes
Scientific calculators
Shaking incubators
Sonicators
Specimen collection containers
Spectrophotometers
Spreading rods
Swinging bucket centrifuges
Test tube shakers
Tissue culture plates
Top-loading electronic balances
Transmission electron microscopes TEM
Triple beam balances
Ultracentrifuges
Ultramicrotomes
Ultraviolet UV transilluminators
Ultraviolet UV visible spectrophotometers
Ultraviolet water purification systems
Vacuum dehydration units
Vacuum evaporators
Vertical drying ovens
Video imaging systems
Video microscopes
Water flow gauges
Water samplers
Water-jacketed CO2 incubators
Weather stations
X ray spectrometers
Zoom microscopes

Technology Skills required for Biologist

Adobe Photoshop
Agilent Technologies GeneSpring GX
Basic Local Alignment Search Tool BLAST
BioKin PlateKi
BLAT
Blue Tractor Software DNADynamo
C++
CUBIC
Deoxyribonucleic acid DNA sequence analysis software
EMBOSS
EnzymeX
ESRI ArcGIS software
Excavator
FASTA
FoldX
Gene Codes Sequencher
Geographic information system GIS software
IBM SPSS Statistics
Ingenuity Systems Ingenuity Pathways Analysis
JaMBW
Joint Prediction of Operons JPOP
Linux
MacVector
Meyer Instruments Optimas
Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Office software
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Minitab
NAMD
National Instruments LabVIEW
Oracle Java
Partek Incorporated Partek Genomics Suite
Perl
Phrap
Phred
Protein Explorer
Python
R
RepeatMasker
SequentiX TreeMe
sim4
Software development tools
SoftZymics VisualEnzymics
Structured query language SQL
SURFDriver Software WinSURF
Textco BioSoftware Gene Inspector
The MathWorks MATLAB
The Mathworks SimBiology
TIBCO Spotfire
UNIX
VayTek VoxBlast
Visual Molecular Dynamics VMD
Web browser software
Wolfram Research Mathematica
Word processing software

US Universities

How to become Biologist in 2024