Industrial Placement Student Review

It was a great opportunity to have a real insight on the research and development area of a big pharmaceutical company, which is something you can hardly ever experience. Apart from that, I learnt a lot of organic chemistry and also other complementary skills that surely will play an important role in my future life as a scientist.

You continuously feel valued by the fellow students as well as by all the supervisors, which motivates you a lot because you feel that what you are doing and working on really can make a difference, and that your ideas and thoughts will be taken into account. In my opinion it would be very hard to work as a real scientist if you did not feel valued, and surely that is not the case at GSK.

My supervisor was always helpful and careful about my performance, and equally the other supervisors and managers of the team were extremely approachable for all the industrial placement students. This support and guidance was really useful in order to learn throughout the year, because learning from top scientist is something that really makes a difference.

The good thing is that you could take as much work as you felt you could handle. That was helpful in order to be able to deliver results in the predicted timeline, and depending on how much you wanted to work you could ask for more. Furthermore, if you felt you were given too much work you could always ask for help to the other members of the group, which is how a real team is supposed to work.

I was always keen on being given responsibility, and that was rewarded by working in high priority projects and experiments that had to be delivered within the expected deadline. Being able to handle this responsibility was one of the greatest lessons I learnt during my placement, because I was in a position I had never been before, where many decisions were to be taken depending on my results.

I believe that everything I learnt during the placement year will be helpful for me in my future career. From commitment to your personal work to work ethics, including side skills such as teamwork and giving scientific presentations, everything will be useful even if I do not work as a scientist in the future. In my opinion there are very few places I could have enjoyed this intensive and multidisciplinary training.

The atmosphere in the office was amazing, specially when by the mid-year our group moved to a whole new office called "SmartLab", in which more than 50 people, including students, supervisors and managers, were working together: That allowed us to get to know better the rest of the team, and it also provided an exciting, sociable, flexible and sometimes even funny environment to work in.

Once a week the PhD students organised a problem session for the Industrial Placement students, which proved to be a great way for us to learn chemistry and for them to learn how to supervise and teach. Apart from that, we were always encouraged to go to lectures and seminars in order to learn as much as we could during the placement. Finally, my supervisor was always keen to teach me about the chemistry I was doing in the lab as well as general knowledge on medicinal chemistry.

I would 100% consider working for GSK, since the time I spent there was outstanding both professionally and personally. I believe they really care about their employees and to provide a good environment to work in. As a result, I think it would be a perfect place for me. Also, their top quality research is very exciting for every scientist from any field.

The cost of living was not outrageous, and considering our stipend we earned more than enough to live without worrying too much about the money. Also, sharing houses with other industrial placement students was good to save some money and also to get to know people in the beginning, so overall living together with others was actually improving the experience quite a lot.

The Nightlife was not great in Stevenage, but thanks to the fact that there were lots of industrial placement students it improved a lot. For instance, lots of house parties were organised throughout the year, and when none was organised you could always go to the pub and find several other colleagues from work. That was really important to get to know everyone else and make the year more enjoyable.