Profile

My name is Heather, pronouns she/her, I am 26 and I am a chemist. I live in Glasgow, and moved here from Inverness 8 years ago to go to University.

I did a 5 year course at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow which was a mixture of taught classes (lectures and practical labs) and working on research projects, in the university and on placement in chemical industry. For my fourth year I did an industrial placement in Liverpool making the ingredients for sun cream that mean it protects you from the sun! I enjoyed living in Liverpool and exploring somewhere new, but was also very happy to come back to Glasgow for my fifth year and see all my friends I’d missed while I was away.

In my summers between uni years I did a variety of jobs, from a chemistry summer placement to working as an outdoor activity instructor at a PGL holiday camp. I planned to move to Canada which I finished uni, but it was 2020 and the middle of lockdown so instead I got a job at a factory making medicines in Livingston. I worked there for about 3 years, then moved to my current role at the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Glasgow, which is also a factory but has the extra purpose of demonstrating new technologies to industry.

I don’t have any pets but when I lived in Liverpool my housemate had a cat and I would like to get one in the future. I have lots of houseplants, I think 33 at the moment, including a palm tree that’s almost as tall as me who is called Larry! I also love octopi, but don’t think I could reasonably have one as a pet. Instead my lovely friends made me a knitted on for my birthday, he is called Raphael.

While I’ve been at uni I’ve learnt to rock climb, and now climbing, hill-walking and running outdoors are my favourite hobbies. I also like to swim and do weight-lifting training when I’m stuck in the city for uni or work. Indoors my hobbies include reading, baking, knitting and sewing, as well as playing fiddle/violin.

Whilst at university I worked on two different research projects with two different research groups:

Summer placement after 2nd year – The group I worked with are experts in ‘labelling’ molecules with ‘heavy hydrogen’, special atoms which you can pinpoint and ‘see’ with the right equipment. Using drug molecules with these special labels means that drug trials can ‘follow’ the drugs through the body and see whether they, for example, go to the right place or build up somewhere where they might cause a side-effect. This method is therefore useful to speed up the testing of new drugs, and saves a lot of time, money and materials.
However, at the moment the special label atoms can only be added to certain types of drugs. To speed up the testing of all drugs, chemists need to work out ways to either label new kinds of drugs or ways to make more complicated drugs out of simple ones which have already been labelled. My project was working on the second of those possibilities. I spent 9 weeks working in the lab, and by the end I had made 1 labelled drug molecule! It was hard work but very interesting, and I learnt a lot about how to do a real research project, where most things you try don’t work!

Masters project in 5th year – Chemicals called ‘catalysts’ are used in a lot of chemical manufacturing processes all over the world, and without them the important chemical reactions needed to make the products – drugs, pesticides, fuels, foods – would not work. However a lot of catalysts are made of precious metals – silver and gold and also platinum, palladium, rhodium and iridium which are even rarer. When they were first invented these metals weren’t used for many other applications, and only a very small amount of catalyst is required for each factory and can last many years, so no-one worried that the metals might run out. Nowadays, however, all of these metals are used in smartphones and computers, and there is a very real risk that they will run out. This has already made them very expensive. For that reason chemists are working on new catalysts which are made from metals that are less rare, so that their use would be sustainable, as well as cheaper. My project worked on making catalysts using Magnesium. Again, this was hard which on the surface didn’t have much success, in the whole project I didn’t make any successful catalysts that were stable solids and could actually be used in a factory! But I did find out some of the reasons that cause them to break down, which will be useful in future work on these catalysts, and I learnt a lot about the subject and also how to work in a lab by myself, which is pretty important since being a student is really training for the future.

I also did a year long industrial placement working as a research scientist for a company which makes the ingredients for sun cream. I worked on making new products which contain nano/micro sized particles of metal oxides, which are physical filters to UV radiation so protect your skin from this dangerous radiation. These are very relevant at the moment because the alternative, chemical filters, have been banned in some places because they are thought to damage coral reefs. Really most sun cream you buy will contain a mixture of chemical and physical filters, and chemists need to develop better physical filters before we can stop using chemical filters. For example, sun cream made with physical filters only tends to leave white marks on your skin, which means people don’t want to wear it, but chemists are working to change the size of the metal oxide particles used to stop this problem.

Since uni I have worked full time in the pharmaceutical (drug) industry, and I have worked on lots of projects for lots of companies. In my first work place I did both lab-based work and manufacturing in a clean room factory, making capsules containing drugs for people to take by mouth. In my current job, I do more desk-based work, as we are currently planning the set up of a factory, to make DNA based drugs. This factory will demonstrate new technology, so be highly automated, but I hope to still get to do some work by hand, it’s fun!

07:30 – wake up. Eat cereal and drink tea

08:00 – drive to work

08:30 – start work, normally with chat to colleagues!

09:00 – planning meeting

09:30 – independent work

12:00 – lunch

13:00 – meeting, working with team

14:00 – independent work

16:00 – meeting with client online

17:00 – finish work, go to the gym

20:00 – go home, eat dinner

20:30 – watch TV/read/craft

22:45 – bed time