Summer projects provide an exciting window into the world of research. For undergraduate students, practical chemistry is limited to the structured experience of laboratory teaching, which is far removed from the day-to-day reality of working in the field. Often lacking a technical or experimental background, students struggle to understand how to apply the skills they are learning and how those experiments connect to the wider world. Masu.
Placements therefore provide a valuable opportunity – an opportunity for students to step into research, strengthen existing skills and tackle real-world problems. “These projects give us a broader picture of why we do chemistry,” said Stephen Mansell, a catalysis researcher at Heriot-Watt University in the UK. “They give students a taste of what research is really like, and it definitely helps them decide if they want to continue chemistry as a career.”
Summer classes between his second and third undergraduate years were an important part of Munsell's chemistry journey. “College always has its challenges, and I think sophomore year was probably one of them,” he says. “Having the opportunity to work in a laboratory allowed me to develop my skills, and by the third year I was more confident and my experiments were going well.” This newfound confidence and interest in research carried me through my final year. This was an important stepping stone in Mansell's current position as assistant professor. Since then, he has worked hard to ensure others enjoy similar opportunities, and in the past 10 years he has hosted 10 summer students.
Employment is not only beneficial for undergraduates. These short-term positions provide an excellent opportunity to gain teaching experience by supervising students placed by a permanent member of the group. “Oftentimes, PhDs are not aware of all the useful professional skills they have developed over the course of two or three years,” Mansell says. “I think it gives them a lot of confidence to feel like they know enough to teach others.”
Also, many academics can work on more projects than members of the group, so dedicated collaboration can be very helpful in moving these dormant projects forward.
an eye-opening experience
Mansell is adamant that these important contributions by summer students should be recognized, and the group's recent paper1 Researchers working on the design of improved rhodium CH boration catalysts have announced the names of three summer students who have contributed to the project for the third year in a row. “This was primarily the work of my PhD student Paul Morton, and our undergraduate summer students explored various topics around it,” Mansell explains. “Abigail Boyce worked on the formation of bound carbene ligands and the boronation of hexane, Lennox Stewart performed and analyzed several catalytic reactions, and Anamaria Piszpek did computational chemistry with Stuart MacGregor. .”
Boyce, Stewart, and Piszpek have since started or completed their Ph.D.s, each citing a summer placement with Mansell as an important part of their decisions. “I was a COVID-19 grad, so when I joined the summer project, I had no lab experience and was really losing confidence in chemistry,” Boyce said. “I'm so grateful to have had this experience. In the end, I loved it so much that I decided to pursue a PhD in organometallic chemistry, something I never would have considered before.”
Two years of severe coronavirus restrictions have had a major impact on how undergraduates learn chemistry, with social distancing regulations requiring faculty to quickly develop teaching alternatives to traditional teaching labs. . “We were supposed to have one lab session with him in the first semester, but lab time was cut short. We did the first lockdown, then there was a second lockdown. That was pretty much it,” Boyce recalls. “All we have to do is watch a video or read a script and we are given a data set to create a lab report. We basically have no practical skills and chemistry is no longer fun.”
“In my fourth year, I was worried that I would have to do independent projects and have no idea what I was doing,” Stewart explains. “There were a lot of personal skills that we completely missed.”
During their training, Boyce and Stewart were able to practice underused laboratory skills, increase their confidence in the basics, and learn many unfamiliar specialized techniques, such as using the Schlenk line and glove box. . The complex analyzes required to interpret the results of experiments also allowed the pair to put into practice for the first time her theoretical knowledge of characterization techniques such as X-ray crystallography, 2D NMR, and gas chromatography. I did.
As soon as I finished the project, I knew I really wanted to get a PhD.
abigail voice
Mansell said the looser placement schedule compared to teaching labs reduces the time pressure on individual experiments and gives students time to think about what they're doing and why. . He added that focusing on the bigger picture rather than creating the perfect research report is a more realistic view of chemistry research, and that's not the only thing that's surprising for undergraduates. “The interaction between supervisors and research students is very important because we often give them tasks that they don't know the answer to. There's a lot more discussion going on than they expected.”
Being immersed in a research group was particularly eye-opening for Boyce. “She loved the collaborative aspect of learning the research process from others and learning the freedom and creativity of the job,” she says. “As soon as I finished the project, I knew I really wanted to get a PhD.”
Industry involvement
Johnson Matthey's support through the Platinum Group Metals (PGM) awards scheme was key to promoting Boyce and Stewart's work. “The university doesn't really have a budget for supplies for summer students, so they have to come up with chemicals or other funding,” Mansell explains. “Johnson Matthey's involvement in this project was critical. Without the rhodium trichloride financing, we would have had to abandon the rhodium project completely.”
As part of our leadership in sustainable technology, Johnson Matthey's PGM scheme uses small quantities of platinum group metals (typically costing hundreds of pounds per gram) to facilitate research into new uses for these catalytic elements. (cost) is available for rent. All research waste is returned to the company and most of the precious metals are recovered through an on-site recycling facility, which later makes this material available to other teams. While we welcome applications from all researchers, the organizing team is particularly keen to support projects that expand participation or bring new researchers into the field. “We provided Stephen with 5g of rhodium metal, which has a market price of about £580 today,” says Barbara Breeze, senior principal scientist at Johnson Matthey. “We are delighted that this award supported her three summer students and led to the publication of the magazine.”
Johnson Matthey, like many other companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, offers its own in-house summer apprenticeships, offering a two-week experience for A-level students and a free trial for those aged 18 and over. We offer long-term training opportunities. “Building the talent pipeline is critical. Clearly, to achieve our energy transition and sustainability goals, we need as many chemists, engineers and scientists as possible to enter the field.” Brees says. “Student placement allows us to develop and enthuse talent for careers in industry, with the potential to employ these individuals after completing their studies.”
Most summer placements at Johnson Matthey begin with students submitting their CV and cover letter and expressing their interest in the experience they would like to gain. This contact often inspires and shapes the resulting projects, and Gareth Hart, now a research fellow at Johnson Matthey, says this is exactly what secured him a position between schools and universities in 2018. It's a method. “I really wanted to work at the intersection of academia and industry,” he says.
Being in such a team environment is very helpful in developing good collaboration skills
Gareth Hart
Over the course of two months, Hart worked on a variety of projects across health, metal recycling, and platinum group metals, but was particularly excited about how the specific skills she developed in an academic setting could be applied in an industrial setting. The contrast with academic chemistry, especially regarding the relative importance of safety, scaling, and lifecycle considerations, is entirely new, and Hart says that in building an understanding of these different industrial priorities, , I recall how I was supported by various field teams.
In addition to the extensive technical experience gained from this placement, the opportunity also allowed Hart to develop soft skills that are often overlooked in undergraduate study. “Summer training can be one of students' first experiences of important teamwork in science, so being exposed to that team environment is very helpful in developing good collaboration skills.” It helps,” he explains. “Communication is another important element: reporting the findings and translating them into a presentation format that others can understand.”
This positive experience crystallized Hart's career ambitions to work at the intersection of academia and industry, and in 2021 he returned to Johnson Matthey as a research scientist. “Seeing all the great science and the impact it has on the world, I always had a strong desire to return here,” he explains.
Investing in the future workforce
The majority of the chemistry community recognizes the value of these opportunities, and most academic institutions and commercial organizations are happy to accept approaches from interested students. But finding the right position is only the first step. Funding these positions is also very important. “Unpaid placements only really benefit a few. To be fair and available to everyone, you have to pay,” says Mansell. “However, there is no central system or regulation to ensure funding, and it is up to each university and organization to decide how much money to spend on summer training.”
Hart says large companies like Johnson Matthey often have budgets allocated for outreach and summer training, so it's always worth asking. “Johnson Matthey is also deeply involved in the RSC’s Broadening Horizons scheme, which provides a structured route for disadvantaged and under-represented students to access summer jobs and mentoring. ” he says.
More broadly, several national systems are in place to support these opportunities in academia and areas where such outreach funding is not available. The RSC offers undergraduate research grants for six to eight weeks of summer training each year, and students are invited to submit a project proposal with a supervisor of their choice to apply for funding. UKRI also recently changed its rules to allow universities to divert excess funding from PhD student slots to support summer jobs.
While it is difficult to determine how these projects will be funded and who will be responsible for them, it is clear that these opportunities represent a valuable investment in the future of the chemical science workforce. “Doing a summer placement completely changed the path of my life,” Boyce says. “It gives me the power to make decisions about my future in chemistry. Without it, I would have taken a completely different path.”
