Profile

I was born and bred in Liverpool and still live there to this day. I had juggled around with deciding to be a doctor when I was young. After doing some work experience in a hospital, I decided that the hospital enviroment was not for me. I was a bit lost after this and was unsure of what to do. I had always enjoyed science, chemistry was a particular favourite as it was a lot more exciting than the others. I was taken in by lots of exploding and colourful things. It was my college chemistry teacher who introduced me to doing chemistry as a career.

So after college, I headed off to Bradford University to do chemistry. I ended up taking a break during my third year of uni. I came back to Liverpool and I got a job as a lab technician in a school then I later resumed my studies and got my current job at a speciality chemicals company.

I work in the R&T dedpartment of a speciality chemicals company based in the Wirral. I have been doing a performance chemicals home care project for the past two years. Home care referrs to products for laundry care, cleaning, dishwashing and so on. The project are ususally structured in two parts: synthesis and application. The synthesis chemists will work on making new compounds for the project. The applications chemists are responsible for making sure those compounds work. They will run the compounds through standard tests or make up their own test.

I work in applications and the majority of my job involves testing these new chemicals to see if they are suitable for their purpose. I also work on coming up with new tests or adapting tests from books/journals. I report the results of those tests to people in charge of the projects.

There is more to being a chemist than just testing or making new chemicals. A large part of the job involves reading literature and safety. When I do a test, I have to make sure that risk assessments are in place. When working on a project, I will do searches to look at advances in the area I am working on.