Procter & Gamble is one of the largest personal care companies in the world. If I gave you 10 seconds to find a P&G product, I guarantee there would be at least 5 in the kitchen cupboard. They are responsible for delivering Ariel, Fairy, Bold, Gillette, and so many more brands.
Naturally, working for such a large business means having access to a lot of confidential information, which can be very daunting at first. What if I get it wrong? What if I release millions of pounds worth of information to our top competitor?
What if I accidentally include something top secret in my BNS Blog post??? It’s all very 007! Photo by vikingvixxen on Tumblr.
In reality, these things rarely happen if we are vigilant, however the support of the intern community and wider company is vital in getting through the first few weeks.
My project
Have you ever taken a moment during your laundry to stop and look at your washing powder, or Ariel Pods? Years of research has gone into these products, from complete prototypes which fail 50 times to the first, glorious batch made in the manufacturing plant successfully.
Just one of P&G’s many products! Photo by Erik Binggeser on Unsplash.
I was lucky enough to spend 13 months as an Associate Process Engineer in the Launch Team in Procter & Gamble, at their Newcastle Innovation Centre (NIC), as part of my Professional Placement Year.
The role of a Process Engineer is to review mini scale manufacturing techniques, e.g. making detergent powder on a lab bench, and make the process more “scalable” so it can be viably made in our plants. This means redesigning how the product is made to satisfy its demand – products must be made quickly in large quantities and not cost a fortune!
My work over the course of the year has facilitated the development of many new products to a stage where many of them can now be tested in manufacturing plants. Unfortunately, that’s about as much as I can tell you here – like I said, very James Bond…
A far cry from university
P&G operate from the base-up, meaning people like me have strong influence on the direction of the business. Managers and supervisors look to the associate researchers and engineers for guidance on what is possible in product innovation, as most of them have limited recent lab exposure. This gives interns and new hires incredible freedom to explore and try new things, rather than sticking to the straight and narrow – it is research and development after all!
P&G offers flexible working, giving me freedom to begin my day early and get home early to enjoy whatever sunlight we had in Newcastle that day! Equally, if a later start was needed, I could very easily make up the time. It was actively encouraged to leave work laptops at the office, so we don’t over-work; the work-life balance of their employees is very important to P&G.
Plenty of funded pizza nights made up for lost nights out! Photo by Aurelien Lemasson-Theobald on Unsplash.
COVID social life
The first people I met upon arriving at NIC were the intern social reps. They arguably had the most difficult job of everyone during the “COVID intern intake” as we were affectionately known!
Interns in “normal times” are welcomed into the company with a ball down in Surrey, where they get to meet all P&G interns in their cohort. Obviously with COVID, we were lucky to even make it into the office, so the welcome ball was off the table. Our reps worked so hard to give us some social time with very restricted circumstances, on top of running their own business projects. They fought for us to get funded take-away nights where we were able to video call over dinner and drinks, followed by games like Kahoot.
Our intern social calls became a regular thing, giving us all time to chat about life; work related or not. I’ve made friends for life!
The future
My experience at P&G has shown me what kind of doors will be open for me after completing my degree. I never in a million years would have thought I’d love a Process Engineer role, as it is so far removed from Biomedicine, but my internship has proved me wrong! I’ve been able to talk to people in all areas of the business and understood how they got to where they are today. I know the most valuable part of my year has been the experience, which will be vital in whatever work I go onto after graduating!
I have been leading the Partners programme in the School of Biomedical Sciences (as it was then) since 2014 – and have enjoyed every moment.
In “normal times” it’s a great opportunity for students to come onto campus and experience university life in a “snapshot”. It’s my ideal that the experience will minimise fear of the unknown, seeing that Newcastle University’s School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences is a place where students can feel at home, see themselves thriving and anticipate a great 3 or 4 years ahead.
Obviously, last year and this year things have changed, and we’ve had to move the provision totally online, but hopefully there is still a chance to see what university life will be like, meet future colleagues in studies and members of staff, and get to know each other.
The School has an increasingly diverse student body coming from all sorts of backgrounds. Our aim is to build an inclusive environment where everyone is supported and encouraged to succeed regardless of who we are, and the Partners programme plays a key role in this. We all have hurdles in life which we need to navigate and it’s the job of all staff and students to make sure that everyone feels at home in the School.
For me, Partners has two main benefits: the most obvious is the reduced offer, but I think the most important is the removal of barriers. Enabling students to see the School as a place they want to be, where they feel they can belong and a place they can thrive.
Hear from some of our previous Partners, and current full-time, students below about how the Partners programme helped prepare them for university study. With bonus staff perspectives from Dr Geoff Bosson, Dr Harley Stevenson-Cocks and Dr Vanessa Armstrong on delivering the Partners programme in the remote world!
I have been involved with Partners for the last 2 years now and it’s something I really enjoy being part of. Although we were remote last year and will also be this year, we still managed to interact and discuss science over Zoom and on discussion boards, and I got to showcase just how important immunology is – especially mid-pandemic!
It was a very welcomed opportunity to interact with students again in the sessions we ran last year and COVID-19 seemed like an appropriate topic for the week where we could cover all of the subject disciplines we offer within the School. The feedback we received was really encouraging and I was grateful for my first experience of running a successful remote course all on a new virtual learning environment (VLE) platform (Canvas).
I’m passionate about supporting all students and encouraging uptake of opportunities to help develop new skills, support career progression and improve employability. I am the Academic Lead for Employability and also co-ordinate placement years with Harley. I was really keen to connect alumni from the School with Partners and to help insire.
Having had quite a convoluted career myself my motto is (sorry for the cliché!) “Life is a journey and not a destination”.
The Partners program opened a door to a university career I didn’t think I would ever experience. Coming from a lower-income background, without a perfect set of A-Levels, I had already accepted that I wouldn’t be studying at a first-choice university. When I noticed that Newcastle offered a program that specifically encouraged and facilitated the entry of disadvantaged students, I was sceptical at first. I thought, what’s the catch?
Many universities offer foundation programs as a stepping-stone to their desired degree. However, those programs involve an extra year of university study, including the required funding. After attending the Partners summer school, I was very happy with what I’d experienced. The lecturers were welcoming, informative, and for once I was actually confident that I could attain a degree at a quality university. I’m currently in my second year of a (so far) successful Nutrition degree, and I appreciate the opportunity.
When the Partners scheme had to be changed from an on-campus in-person experience to a virtual one at short notice, it meant that more academic staff could get involved…..and as I love to talk about science at any opportunity, I did not need asking twice if I would get involved!
As someone who did not enter academia through the traditional A-level route I am keen to support initiatives, such as Partners, that open educational opportunities to anybody who has the ability to reach their maximum potential.
Being able to talk about my favourite subject and explain the role that biochemistry plays in our understanding of the COVID-19 virus means I have had to keep up to date with the scientific literature. This thirst for knowledge is something I have always enjoyed and we want to ignite and cultivate in you during our Partners programme.
The sessions I enjoyed the most last year were the live online debates. The use of Zoom meant I was able to ‘virtually meet’ many of the students and engage in current scientific discussion. We will be including this successful format again this year as part of the week-long programme and I look forward to meeting you when you join in.
The Partners programme was thoroughly enjoyable and allowed me to meet new people, as well as giving me a head start on using Canvas. I found this really helpful, especially with changes to the way content is being delivered this year, as I had insight into how lectures would be delivered, enabling me to practice note taking.
Meeting people on my course was great, as it meant I already had people I could chat to about work, as well as being able to meet them (socially distanced) once we got to Newcastle, which helped me to settle in. Each day on the programme we studied a different aspect of biomedical science which I found very interesting, as this was a new level of detail compared to A-Level. The content was also linked to the SARS-CoV-2 virus which made it relevant and therefore more engaging.
The Partners programme for me was an exciting, educating and eye-opening experience. Having just taken my A-Level exams, attending the summer school was a small glimpse at my future.
The format of the summer school allowed for myself and future students alike to get a feel for the university; to get used to our soon-to-be new home. I had the opportunity to experience what lectures, seminars and labs would be like whilst also having the opportunity to be taught by our future lecturers, an experience I was particularly excited for.
My own mental health issues ensures that I have a bucket of worries about changing environments and the summer school allowed these worries to be put at ease. Even though I did not end up going to university until the year after, the experience still aided me and, if anything, only gave me more reasons to reapply.
I’d only been working at Newcastle for a few weeks when I was asked to help with the School’s Partners scheme last summer, so I must admit I felt like a bit of an imposter. I hadn’t even been on the university campus by that point!
Nevertheless, as the physiology specialist for the week, I was excited by the prospect of delivering a day of content covering the impacts of COVID-19 on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and so I jumped at the chance to get involved. If anything, I was probably a bit too excited, as I got carried away and ended up recording an 80 minute lecture on the subject…
For me at the time, it was a great opportunity to work with new colleagues and deliver something new and engaging in the remote format we’d been forced into by the pandemic. Getting the balance right was tricky, as we weren’t able to rely on ‘live’ sessions which is what we are more used to, so we had to ensure our asynchronous (non-live) plan was still coherent, informative, challenging, and most importantly interesting!
It was also nice to get some student contact in, as I’d joined the team right at the end of the academic year when teaching was winding down.
When the current academic year started back in September, I recognised a lot of students from the Partners scheme were now enrolled as full-time students here, so it was good to know we hadn’t put everyone off! Our opportunities to see everyone in real life are unfortunately still limited, but fingers crossed that all changes soon and we can start seeing people in three-dimensions again.
In the end we received some overwhelmingly positive feedback about the scheme, which was great and showed our efforts had been appreciated. I’m very much looking forward to getting involved again this summer and building on what we learnt last year with the next Partners cohort!
When I attended Newcastle Partners in 2019, I was extremely excited about being offered this chance to spend a week on campus to get a taster of Biomedical Sciences and also to meet new people! At the time I was very shy and was nervous to leave home for a week to be in Newcastle, however when I arrived I realised everyone was feeling the same, so friendships came naturally!
I would say one of the most useful things in Partners were the lectures. As the style of teaching was so different from my sixth form this allowed myself time to trial and error note taking and figure out which type was best tailored to my particular learning style.
Overall I think the social events, trial lectures and the experience on campus really helped me get an idea of what Newcastle University was all about and helped me make friends that I still have today!
We recently asked our students to submit entries detailing the work of inspirational female scientists as part of a blog competition for International Women’s Day. We are delighted to share all of the entries below – choosing the top two was not an easy decision, so congratulations to all writers!
Ada Lovelace – by Olivia Rowe, 3rd year MSci Biochemistry (1st prize)
What does it mean to be a woman?
For centuries, women have been objectified and designated ‘The Second Sex’. Lord Byron’s 19th century poem ‘She Walks In Beauty’ is a prime example, where he describes his female subject to be as provocative as ‘starry skies’ on a clear night.
Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, defies all expectations of what femininity would look like in the 19th century. Termed the “enchantress of numbers” by mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, Ada’s work in the computer science field highlighted that women would no longer stand to be second to men.
Outwardly, Ada resembled the typical female subject of the 19th century, however, inwardly, she yielded intelligence surpassing all expectations at that time (Image source: Science Museum Group)
Ada made her mark when she published a translation article on the Analytical Engine, containing what some believe to be the first computer program. Ada’s vision of this Analytical Engine extended past its potential to revolutionise the field of mathematics, but to how it could even transform how music is composed.
The gender imbalance within computer science is as significant now as in the 19th century. Of those applying for computer science courses through UCAS in 2019, just 19% were female.
It makes me wonder if women were not viewed as ‘The Second Sex’, would society have progressed to greater things by now? Would we be living on Mars? Would there be a cure for cancer?
We must now encourage our daughters, sisters, and friends that anything is possible, regardless of gender.
Ada Lovelace Day, celebrated yearly on the second Tuesday in October, is a chance to do exactly this.
Mary Guinan – by Sarah Richardson, 3rd year BSc Food and Human Nutrition (2nd prize)
The first woman to become Chief Scientific Advisor to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr Mary Guinan, fought an uphill battle for several years to be allowed to study and work within epidemiology.
Following graduation, she began training in the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC. She was initially prohibited from working towards smallpox eradication by the Indian Government. However, after threatening to write to the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, she was accepted to the eradication programme.
In less than five months, the region Dr Guinan worked in was deemed smallpox-free.
One element of Dr Guinan’s varied career was contributing to a mass vaccination programme in India (Image source: National Cancer Institute via Unsplash)
Dr Guinan then turned her attention to sexually transmitted diseases, such as herpes and a mysterious disease affecting gay men. She interviewed those with Kaposi’s sarcoma (a cancer diagnosed in the early stages of the disease) and collected samples.
In 1984, the virus was finally identified as HIV thanks, in part, to the work of Dr Guinan. Since then, she has contributed to research and policy regarding childhood leukaemia and fluoridated water. She recently turned her attention to promoting intrauterine device (IUD) and implant use in order to reduce the prevalence of opioid-addicted babies in America.
As a female epidemiologist in the early 1970s, Dr Guinan stated that she never had a mentor, but her determination to contribute to the field has established her as a major role model for aspiring female epidemiologists. Her seminal work will forever inspire young women in STEM.
Flossie Wong-Staal – by Georgia Cohoon, 1st year BSc Food and Human Nutrition
International Women’s Day – the day when we appreciate how amazing we are. Women of all types too – cisgender, transgender and everything in between. We should be so proud of who we are and the things we achieve every single day. What better way to celebrate than by looking at one of the coolest women in the world?
One particularly inspirational woman I have had the pleasure of reading about is Flossie Wong-Staal. Dr Wong-Staal and her family fled from China to Hong Kong during the Communist Revolution. There she excelled in science, then proceeded to move to America to study Bacteriology at the University of California. She then obtained a PhD in molecular biology, and stayed to continue her research.
Now, as if these achievements aren’t incredible already, Dr Wong-Staal became the first scientist to clone HIV. This led to development of blood tests for HIV, and thus the eventual development of HIV treatment which is still used today.
The HIV epidemic resulted in people all over the world dying from unknown causes, alongside shame and a blanket of discrimination over the gay community. The significance of Dr Wong-Staal’s achievements is indescribable.
HIV is no longer a death sentence. It is so incredible to write that statement. HIV is no longer a death sentence.
I could not make this statement if it was not for the work of Dr Wong-Staal, and for this, I and others will forever be grateful for her determination.
Dr Wong-Staal, you are just one of the reasons we celebrate International Women’s Day. I am so proud to be part of a community that fights back when the odds are against us.
Happy International Women’s Day everyone.
Flossie Wong-Staal – by Nidhi Bhat, 1st year BSc Biomedical Sciences
Flossie Wong-Staal was a female, Chinese-American virologist who became the 1st scientist to aid in the molecular cloning of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which determined the function of its genes. Her research highlighted the mechanisms used by HIV to evade the immune system’s defences and, importantly, in 1983 revealed the causative link between HIV and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Flossie Wong-Staal also worked on the human T-cell leukaemia virus (HTLV) that revealed the existence of interleukins, a group of proteins which regulate communication between various cells.
This discovery led to progressive therapies and in 1984, she established that AIDS was caused by a retrovirus. In 1985, she genetically mapped the whole virus, then, in 1990, she carried out extensive gene therapy research into successfully repressing HIV using stem cells.
The inspiring scientific advances made by Flossie Wong-Staal helped develop specific tests for HIV, as well as the ability to screen donated blood used daily by hospitals across the world. These tests enabled accelerated testing and diagnosis for millions of patients.
Her work initiated future investigations into HIV treatments. This massively helped to reduce the societal stigma surrounding HIV and, with the potential for future testing and preventative treatments, gave hope to patients that their quality of life would be greatly improved.
Gertrude Elion – by Katie Riches, 2nd year BSc Pharmacology
As a female Pharmacology student, my inspirations have always been centred around Trudy. This woman is such an inspiration and someone I hope to live up to one day.
Trudy’s main life mission was to alleviate human suffering, and through the drugs she has created it is fair to say she has achieved this and continues to save people’s lives 22 years after she passed away.
Living in a world of sexist bias, Trudy took jobs as a secretary, chemistry teacher and an unpaid position in a lab until WW2 where she got her big break.
As WW2 diminished the number of male chemists, Trudy found the job of her dreams: assisting George Hitchings at Burroughs Wellcome, which would ultimately become GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
In my day I was told women didn’t go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn’t
Gertrude Elion
Trudy introduced the world to the first drug which could help put leukaemia patients in remission. She then went on to discover a drug that would eventually help patients receive organ transplants without their body rejecting them.
She then went on to develop drugs to treat malaria, meningitis, septicaemia, and bacterial infections.
Although scientists doubted that drugs could fight viruses, Trudy persisted with this idea and from this came a drug which could attack herpes, Epstein-Barr virus, chickenpox, and shingles. With this development, the door was opened for the first AIDS drug: azidothymidine.
To this day Trudy’s name appears on 45 patents for life-saving drugs, and in 1988 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George Hitchings for their work in drug development.
What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get
Gertrude Elion
Lucille V Abad – by Flavia Haryanto, 3rd year Food and Human Nutrition
There may be media famous female scientists such as Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin, but there are countless female scientists that do not receive enough appreciation or attention who are nonetheless impressive in their work.
One woman in STEM that I admire is Filipino scientist Dr Lucille V. Abad. Her research encompasses a plant-based sugar that comes from red edible seaweeds, which is modified then sprayed onto crops such as rice. After trials, Dr Abad and colleagues found that the rice crops treated with the modified sugar had higher yield and were healthier even during a typhoon when compared to untreated plants.
Dr Abad’s work has significant impact on the yield of rice crops in typhoon-prone areas (Image source: Loifotos via Pexels)
Her work led her to win the Julian A. Banzon Medal as a 2017 Outstanding Research and Development awardee. Not only was this difficult to get as she came from an underrepresented group in the STEM field, but in addition she was a female.
I admire her work as this finding of hers can offer life-saving solutions for countries hit by massive disasters. This also can help with sustainability in terms of sustainable diets where rare wild plant species do not grow very well and have low yield.
This discovery or invention can be a one of the global solutions to help the UN achieve their Sustainable Development Goals. This impressive scientist used her knowledge to come up with a solution for a better world, which is something I look up to.
When I first found out I had a placement at AstraZeneca (AZ), I thought I had a pretty good idea of what my days would be – hours and hours working in the lab, writing up experiments and poring over graphs. Maybe, I thought, I can improve my communication skills by presenting data to my team. But even with the unexpected shakeup of lockdown and coronavirus, I didn’t realise just how oversimplified my idea of a lab-based placement was.
I am a fan of lab work, but anyone who knows me well can tell you that one of my favourite pastimes is admin. I have no shame in admitting that I’m the person who finds joy in organising an inbox, or drawing up spreadsheets to track a team’s progress through a big task. It’s a strange hobby, but it’s satisfying, and so when I saw adverts to recruit a new AZ early talent committee, I could hardly not apply for the role of secretary. I had no professional secretarial experience, but it sounded so me!
At this point I was still in the office a few days a week but social distancing and reduced building capacity meant that meeting people was a challenge, and joining a committee felt like a perfect way to build relationships. It was also something I’d never done before – the network this committee served at the time had over 230 members – so a new level of responsibility felt like the perfect way to put my organisational skills to good use.
The full 2020-21 AZinspire Cambridge committee, complete with my hastily-taken photo from when I realised I didn’t have any professional photos of myself on my first day.
As the role would benefit my career development, my supervisor wholeheartedly supported me giving up a couple of hours a week to work with AZinspire, who run events for placement students, apprentices, graduates and postgraduates across the Cambridge sites. My application was successful and before I knew it I was minute-taking for meetings, managing committee communications and updating distribution lists left right and centre.
As much as I love working on the science, it felt good to have a hand in something with shorter-term, more tangible impacts.
An AZinspire social from pre-COVID times, back when events could be held in person. Nowadays everything is via Teams or Zoom, which has the benefit of letting groups working in other countries attend much easier.
My first big job came late December, where I got a taste of event planning by helping to organise a week-long symposium focused on the skills needed to work from home. A small team of us were tasked to identify key speakers, arrange practical and relevant talks that fit the theme and audience, and publicise it enough to get a good turnout.
This was to be done around our usual 9-5 duties, and with an impossibly quick turnaround – our first meeting was the week before Christmas and the symposium started on 18th January! As event planning goes, I was definitely thrown in at the deep end.
Chocolate and kale brownies made by a symposium attendee, using one of the recipes included in the resource pack we shared.
But it was brilliant. The team split up and delegated tasks, but still supported each other when big decisions were made. I found a way to keep track of everyone’s progress so that as the big day approached, we all knew exactly what still needed to be done.
I took charge of arranging a session on career confidence and imposter syndrome, consulting with the CEO of a leading wellbeing training company, and helped design a tailored 2-hour event covering the topics key to our demographic.
In the week leading up to the symposium we received the most new members AZinspire Cambridge had ever seen, growing our network by 15% on event hype alone! Attendance for all sessions was unexpectedly high, and we received brilliant feedback. I was hooked.
An example of some of the data we got from our symposium feedback. If I hadn’t thought to add this question to the form the committee would have kept scheduling lunchtime events! Always a good feeling when you find out something useful unexpectedly.
Since organising this event I’ve taken on a greater role in AZinspire’s events programme: I’m currently organising cross-site coffee meetings and planning the network’s Socials Month. Thinking about my confidence over the years, especially as an autistic person, it can be hard for me to remember just how much I’ve grown and how capable I am now.
The work I’ve done already with AZinspire would have been a stretch for 2019 Kate, and downright unthinkable for 2016 Kate. But I have done it, and more than that, I enjoyed it, and for me that’s where so much of the value of a placement year is. It’s not just about being able to say you’ve worked in a lab, or meeting people in high places who might remember you when you apply for a grad scheme – it’s about grabbing an opportunity to try something interesting and coming out of it with proof that you’re more capable than you realised.
2016 Kate. Back then I wouldn’t even ask what aisle something was on at the supermarket, so to see myself now, getting involved in teams and working with new people all the time, it shows me how far I’ve come.
There are so many more opportunities I’ve taken at AstraZeneca already that I never expected to be able to do, from designing and writing global management training on neurodiversity to being one of the founding members of an LGBTQ+ alliance with GSK.
Thinking about my job, both inside and outside the lab, one thing’s for certain: a placement year in big pharma is so much more than just science.
For a little while now I’ve been looking for ways to help the LGBT+ and disabled communities but was never sure where to go or what I could do. I do still want to find other ways to help, but I found my starting point as an EDI (Equality, Disability, and Inclusivity) representative in the School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences.
How I got the role
I originally applied to be the LGBT+ rep, thinking “well I’m really queer so that’ll work,” but Dr Parry, head of the EDI committee at the time, thought I’d be better suited for the marginalised genders role, seeing as I’m very vocal about being trans. I didn’t have much of a choice when I was 19 going on 12 but I’m still open about it now, when I easily pass as a cis man (not looking quite 20 yet but getting there).
I am also the rep for disabilities, which wasn’t a part of the plan, but I’m very happy how it turned out. I have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and I know that it’s a serious disability, but a lot of times people brush it off and treat it as “not a real mental disability.” Because of this, a lot of the time I’m scared to speak up about it, in fear I won’t be taken seriously.
Me on my 19th vs me on my 20th (I had a cake, birthday bread was more iconic), thanks Puberty 2.0
At our first EDI meeting, it was mentioned our disabilities rep was a final year student, and so we’d have to find a replacement for when she finished university over summer. At that point I volunteered to be a co-rep with her until she left and take over the role afterwards if we didn’t have any other volunteers, and I’m really glad I did so. My fears of not having my ADHD taken seriously are very real, but they never reflected reality while working with the EDI team.
What I did with the role – it’s more than a way to get a free hoodie
Having worked side by side with the Faculty of Medical Sciences since February, I’m happy to say I’m proud of what I’ve achieved so far in my time as a rep, as I managed to make positive changes both to school- and university-wide policy, and to specific students dealing with LGBT+ and disability issues. From simple things like ensuring the lecture slides are more accessible to students, to more serious matters like how DSA (Disabled Students’ Allowance) is addressed in placement talks. After an extremely homophobic survey got sent out to students, we even got the university to change how student surveys are approved to be sent out.
Talk to us
From my experiences I can say that the School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences and Faculty of Medical Sciences are happy to support their students, but a lot of times issues can go unnoticed. Being a representative, I can highlight to the staff, at a professional capacity, any issues students bring up to me, and then address them. Once a solution is presented, I haven’t once seen excuses be made to avoid fixing the problem, no matter how big or small it was.
For this reason, I would urge any student that is having an issue adjusting to life at university to speak to either me or one of the other EDI reps – whoever is most suitable – so we can support you and help make the university experience more accessible.
EDI rep contact information can be found on the Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences Stage 1-4 Community modules on Canvas.
Hi everyone! In January I began working on my final year project. In this blog post we will peek into a real neuroscience laboratory, check out the quirky equipment inside and I will share some details about experiments I do every day.
A bit of background
My project is about alpha-synucleinopathies, which are conditions where a protein called alpha synuclein (ASYN) is mutated and forms toxic “clumps” in the brain. Examples of alpha-synucleinopathies are Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
Parkinson’s disease. Photo by Alessandro Grandini on Adobe Stock
Working with poo turned out to be exactly the summer experience I wanted!
I worked at the national Cryptosporidium Reference Unit (CRU) at Public Health Wales in Swansea with Professor Rachel Chalmers and her team. I received a Scholarship from the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) for this placement, writing the application together with Rachel.
Me working on my summer placement
Cryptosporidium is a parasite that causes diarrhoea, is found globally
and is typically passed from animals, other people, food and fresh water
sources. It is currently a human health issue due to the significant effect it
has in developing countries and the lack of specific treatments to fight the
parasite. Quite often how well you recover from the illness depends on how
healthy you were to begin with!
That’s how I would describe my experience transitioning to Newcastle University from NUMed. Life is pretty similar; people are friendly, the teaching is amazing, the city is as beautiful as home. The only difference is that these things are all bigger, bolder, and brighter here in the U.K. And I’m definitely not complaining!
The red bricks of Newcastle University’s Armstrong building looking glorious in the sun
The move from Malaysia was definitely a tough one. I grew up in Penang, an island just northwest off mainland Malaysia, and this was the only home I’d known. Moving 10-hours away to Johor to start my degree in Biomedical Sciences was scary enough, but NUMed turned to be a home away from home. We’re such a small, tight-knitted community, and on campus we could bond in ways students in a larger university wouldn’t be able to.
“Choosing to begin my studies at NUMed has been the best decision I’ve ever made!”
By Sabrina Amran, Third Year Biomedical Sciences student
Flatmates and I (in middle) visiting (and posing!) the med school for the first time!
The UK was a lot different in my childhood memories compared to how I see it as of now.
Sure, ‘Wilkinsons’ became ‘Wilko’, and everything was a couple pounds cheaper 7 years ago. The weather now seemed sunnier and hotter as well…but I’m not sure how long this will last.
It’s that
time of year when uni is out and you’re not quite sure what to do with your 3
months of freedom. Does the phrase ‘unpaid internship’ fill you with dread?
Well, let me introduce you to UNIQ+…
