{"id":2151,"date":"2020-04-20T13:22:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T12:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/?p=2151"},"modified":"2020-04-20T13:22:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T12:22:29","slug":"a-year-in-industry-as-a-chemical-engineering-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/2020\/04\/20\/a-year-in-industry-as-a-chemical-engineering-student\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year in Industry as a Chemical Engineering Student"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chemical Engineering student, Rosie<\/strong>, gives us an insight into her placement year, working for AstraZeneca.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

After my 3rd<\/sup> year of studying a 4 year integrated masters in Chemical Engineering, I worked as a Process Engineer at AstraZeneca<\/strong> pharmaceutical company for a year. The first thing I learnt from this experience is that a Chemical Engineer and a Process Engineer are the same thing. I actually think Process Engineer better describes the profession which is all about designing, developing and improving processes that make chemicals. AstraZeneca researches, develops and manufactures medicines for cancer, respiratory, kidney and cardiovascular diseases. I worked in the department that develops the process and technology used to manufacture the medicines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this year in industry, no two days were ever the\nsame. My role included a variety of tasks and responsibilities allowing me to\ndevelop my technical skills as an engineer and increase my confidence to work\nin a professional environment. I also developed a lot of skills that will help\nme function in a graduate role, such as communication and time management,\nwhich are essential for effective teamwork. In the pharmaceutical industry,\nchemical engineers are involved in work to develop the manufacturing process,\nas well as facilitating manufacture of material at varying scales for clinical\ntrials or commercial supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked on a project to develop the manufacturing process\nfor a cancer medicine, completing a lab based investigation to gain\nunderstanding of a filtration process in the current manufacturing route. A\nnormal day would mostly be spent in the lab. I ran a set of experiments over\nseveral weeks, each taking a whole day. The experiment aimed to measure change\nin concentration of a liquid when recirculated through a filter. There were 4\nkey stages in the experiment; set up the equipment, run the experiment while\ntaking regular samples, shutdown and clean up the experiment, and then analyse\nthe samples. Once the lab work was complete, all the results were analysed to\ndraw conclusions from the project. I then shared my conclusions and learnings\nfrom the project through oral presentations and written reports, in order to\nmaximise the learning of the company from my project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rosie and her colleagues on their placement year at AstraZeneca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I also worked as part of a team to facilitate the\nmanufacturing of pharmaceuticals for clinical trials. The work I completed\ninvolved assessing the safety of the manufacturing process. Chemical plants\nhave to adhere to very high regulations on pollution and emissions from\nmanufacturing activities, and my work included checking any release of chemical\nfrom process into the environment is within the limits. I was also involved in\naltering the manufacturing site to install all equipment required to\nmanufacture this particular medicine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being in a professional environment, I found there\nwas still a strong social aspect with my co-workers. Admittedly this was not\ncomparable to attending university with thousands of other students in a city,\nhowever at AstraZeneca there were social events at an office level and entire\ndepartment level. There were also around 20 other students completing the Year\nin Industry, and I made some good friends and enjoyed exploring the city of\nManchester which was only a short train ride away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chemical Engineering student, Rosie, gives us an insight into her placement year, working for AstraZeneca. After my 3rd year of studying a 4 year integrated masters in Chemical Engineering, I worked as a Process Engineer at AstraZeneca pharmaceutical company for a year. The first thing I learnt from this experience is that a Chemical Engineer … Continue reading A Year in Industry as a Chemical Engineering Student<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330,317],"tags":[134,59,135,439,437,438,440],"class_list":["post-2151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meet-the-scientists","category-student-profile","tag-chemical-engineering","tag-chemistry","tag-engineering","tag-industry","tag-placement-year","tag-work-placement","tag-year-in-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}