The newly-appointed members of the Biochemical Engineering Department's long-running Crook Society take some time to tell about themselves and what the societ is up to.
What is The Crook Society?
“We’re the department of Biochemical Engineering’s undergraduate events society. We organise events and work to help people get to know each other across the department. We don’t know how it started or how far back it goes! We DO know that it’s the CROOK society not the Crooks society, which is what it got called last year.” (that’s okay, I’ll ask Gary Lye, Head of Department. see end of article, Ed).
“We’re comprised of some first and some second year students, and we’re taking over from the previous committee who are now going into their second year.”
Tell me about yourselves
Eddie Lang (president)
“I did my A-Levels in Surrey, taking biology, chemistry and pure maths. I
joined the course because of its wide aspect, it covers quite a range and I
enjoyed the combination of biology and chemistry and the chance to apply them –
it seemed natural to join the department.”
Seokyoung Kim (vice
president)
“I’m from South Korea but I lived in Nottingham before moving to London and
studied chemistry, maths and further maths. I wanted to do engineering and was
interested in chemical engineering but was aware that biochemical engineering
is a good subject and I wanted to come to study at UCL.”
Jahan Miah (treasurer)
“I studied maths, further maths and design technology A-levels in London – I
grew up in Hackney and now I live in Barking. When I looked at courses I found
Biochemical Engineering really interesting, despite not having studied biology
or chemistry at A-level. The best thing about the course is working with other
engineers and getting to find out how other people think.”
Kate Ferguson (general
secretary)
“My A-level subjects were chemistry, biology and economics, and joined the BSc in Bioprocessing of New Medicines (Business and
Management) because it’s focus was quite wide. I grew up in London but it’s
very different being in the centre of things, you get everything here!”
Syed Mahfuzur
Reza (Social Secretary)
Bioprocessing of New Medicines (Business and Management)
"I did this degree because it is related to the business side of the
pharmaceutical industry which is an area of my interest as I am interested in
nutrition and supplementation"
Stelios Mavrotas (Sport
Secretary)
My name is Stelios. I am currently finished with my first year of
the MEng Biochemical Engineering degree. I choose Biochemical Engineering
because it is an engineering specific discipline course with a big variety of
topics, such as chemistry, biology, physics and of course mathematics.
What are you looking forward to?
“We’re looking forward to careers events, connecting with the whole department and people who work in the industry – we’re really excited to meet with GSK and Unilever, very interested in that. It will be great to help first years get to know each other and the department, joining was quite daunting and it will be great to get to know each other better – the reason we wanted to join was to get to know each other. We’re making sure society is there to support people and also have some fun!”
The undergraduate society is named in honour of Professor Eric Crook one of the early supporters of Biochemical Engineering research at UCL. He undertook some of the early scale-up studies on biological systems in the 1950s while working in the then UCL Department of Biochemistry and collaborating with engineers in the then UCL Department of Chemical Engineering. Crook was one of the original editors of ‘Biotechnology and Bioengineering’ which is still the leading journal in the field.
Prof. Gary Lye, Head of Department
