School of Chemistry
Polymerise
The Polymerise Project is a three-year pilot project funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry's 'Missing Elements' Grant Scheme, launched after the release of the Missing Elements Report. The report found that whilst academic chemistry is a highly diverse field at the undergraduate level, the diversity falls precipitously as you progress through postgraduate, postdoctoral, and eventual academic job roles. The consequence of this is that we are failing to harness all the raw talent available to us, with significant knock-on effects for chemistry, science, and society at large.
Leicester is a 'superdiverse' city, and we have one of the most diverse undergraduate chemistry cohorts in the UK. The Polymerise project provides ring-fenced funding to give our undergraduate students valuable paid research experience that will empower them to pursue competitive career options post-graduation: either in academia or industry. Our hope is that we can take the abundance of raw talent we have at Leicester and grow it into the next generation of leaders in chemistry.
I undertook an 8-week summer placement in organic synthesis under Dr Alison Stuart. I was mentored by PhD students and carried out advanced organic synthetic chemistry, creating products that fed directly into current research projects in the lab. This placement has inspired me to switch to an MChem degree from a BSc, and I am now considering postgraduate study in chemistry. The experience has shown me that I am capable of pursuing chemistry further after graduation. Finally, it is incredibly rewarding to say that I played a part in the ground-breaking chemistry research at Leicester.
I did my research placement in synthetic chemistry with Prof Steven Bull's research group, synthesising analogues for their research program. This placement gave me a real opportunity to get in-depth experience of advanced synthetic methods and characterisation techniques. Since doing the placement, my primary goal after graduating has become to undertake postgraduate studies. It was a challenging experience but rewarding, and I enjoyed it.
I did my placement with Dr Rama Suntharalingam's group synthesising ligands for anti-cancer stem cell metal complexes. The project was fascinating and the complex I synthesised is completely novel, and I enjoyed the process a lot. Doing this placement made me certain about my plans to pursue postgraduate studies in chemistry. The whole experience was extremely insightful.