Another Successful Year of Nuffield Research Placements at UCL CNIE

Dr Nidhi Kapil and Professor Marc-Olivier Coppens from the UCL Department of Chemical Engineering and the Centre for Nature-Inspired Engineering (CNIE) participated in and hosted three Year 12 students, Miss Hamna Malik, Miss Majada Begum and Miss Mohadesa Sherali, under the Nuffield placements scheme. These students aspire to become chemical engineers.

Nuffield Research Placements are funded by the Nuffield Foundation and delivered by STEM Learning. They are engaging, hands-on research projects, where students have the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution towards the work of a host organisation.  

The students worked on the project Nature Inspired Engineering and Nanotechnology, where they developed a nature-inspired solution to tackle a chemical engineering problem. During the placement, they also learnt about chemical engineering and its scope.

Hamna says

I found the Nuffield experience insightful as I learnt more about what chemical engineering actually entails and how you can be inspired by nature. We spoke to many PhD students which gave me more of an interest in work after a masters degree. 

Majada says

My Nuffield Research Placement at UCL was a valuable experience and I found it very enjoyable and informative, being in the lab was especially fun! The people are very sweet and easy to talk to, I was able to learn a lot about Chemical Engineering and the different ways it's applied in the real world, which made me understand what Chemical Engineering is like at university level and beyond.

Mohadesa says

I really enjoyed my placement at UCL for chemical engineering because I was able to understand chemical engineering in a university type setting like in a lab in much more detail. I got to learn more about the different things you can do with chemical engineering from the different PhD students such as energy, batteries, water filtration while being able to see what they’ve done but also understanding it. I now know more about chemical engineering and a clearer idea on what I would like to do.