I was fortunate to secure an industrial placement with Bayer AG CropScience in Frankfurt. This was a synthetic placement with the aim of synthesising, isolating, purifying and characterising small organic molecules which have potential for use as novel herbicides.
Initially I found the prospect of living abroad daunting, but the experience gained was invaluable. I would say that the placement year has been crucial with both my personal and professional development. In terms of personal development, I became more independent, got to explore a lot of southern Germany and made a lot of new friends. As for professional development it was the opportunity to put theory into practice, work as part of an international team and gain an insight to the R&D industry.
I would say that Strathclyde was very supportive and helpful in getting a placement as they prepared me by giving me mock interviews and finessing my CV. It’s difficult to highlight the significance of the industrial placement year in a paragraph but overall the skills I learned from Bayer armed me with the skills necessary to succeed in industry and helped me to secure a graduate job with Reckitt Benckiser in R&D operations.
Finally, I’d like to thank Strathclyde for providing me with a top-class education which gave me all of these opportunities and would highly recommend the university to anyone thinking of studying chemistry.
