St Hilda's College
A Part II project focused on the synthesis of a new bimetallic catalyst
My name is Wouter and I finished my fourth year of chemistry at St. Hilda’s working in Professor Charlotte Williams Research Group in the Chemistry Research Laboratory. My project focused on the synthesis and design of a new bimetallic catalyst for polymerisation and incorporation of carbon dioxide as a monomer in polymers, which couldn’t be more relevant to current events.
In the fourth year, you focus entirely on research and have no lectures or tutorials, which is very different from the previous three years. Generally, I worked 9-5 with some slightly longer days if required. I was assigned a post-doc to help me with my day to day issues and had monthly meetings with my supervisor to discuss my project and progress in detail.
It is a great experience working in a group. You really get a feel for what true academic research is like and see that everyone within a group helps each other. As a Part II especially, people are always there to give you a helping hand. The group I worked in was quite large and I never felt that I was not given enough guidance as there was always someone there to help if I needed it, though I also learned to be more independent in my research over the course of the year.
My project involved a lot of lab work, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Learning how to use gloveboxes, CO2 lines and high pressure reactors amongst many other experimental techniques was amazing and super interesting. I got on well with everyone in my lab and everyone helps each other, jokes around, plays music and also socialises outside the lab with drinks on some Fridays at a pub and a Christmas lunch.
A Part II project in theoretical inorganic chemistry
My name is Kathryn and I completed my 4th year chemistry part II research project in the group of Professor Volker Deringer, a theoretical inorganic chemistry group. My research project was focussed on training artificial neural networks to predict the atomic properties of different chemical systems including Carbon and Silicon. I have learnt a lot about machine learning (ML) which has been incredibly interesting given how fast the field is moving right now!
A typical day consisted of trying to start working by 9am. I had a desk in the group office in the lab, so I could either work there or work remotely from home or a library. When I was in the office, there were several other group members on hand to chat through any problems I might have. Usually, I’d spend the first half an hour of the day making sure all my admin was up to date. I found it incredibly useful to keep a log of all the simulations that I was running (and if they’ve worked or not!). After this, I’d usually set some new simulations running or analyse the results of the completed ones. Most of my analysis was done using python on a departmental Linux machine. I’d usually go for lunch for about an hour with the part II students in the group or other friends. After lunch, I’d read a new paper or work on writing my thesis for a bit before getting back to some more computation. I’d usually leave the lab at about 4.30pm. I found that there is a lot more time and a more regular schedule in the 4th year to fit in extra-curricular activities. During the 4th year, I sang in the Mansfield college choir, played in the University Orchestra, was the food and drink VP for the college ball, and completed the supplementary chemical crystallography course.
I had weekly meetings with my supervisor. We chatted through a weekly report that I’d written and planned my progress for the week ahead. There was also a DPhil student assigned to me in case I had any day-to-day problems but the whole group was happy to help with anything. We had a group seminar once a week where different members of the group presented their research or a new paper in the field. We had several group socials a term which ranged from pub trips to formal dinners. I found it very fun to be in a group with part II students from other colleges. Being able to join the research group for the whole year really helped me to feel involved and see the cutting-edge research going on.
Overall, I would recommend the chemistry 4th year to everyone. I really enjoyed learning more about such a fast-moving field and being able to apply my chemistry knowledge to this was very rewarding - and I didn’t have to do any practical experiments!