July 2009 Archives

The Girl Scouts in the US are doing their best to dispel the myth that science and technology is only of interest to boys!

Places on a new summer camp designed to get girls interested in science have been snapped up and the week-long vacation is already fully booked.

Aimed at 11-14 year olds, the camp is held in partnership with the University of Missouri-Kansas City's School of Computing and Engineering.

The girls will spend the week taking part in hands-on activities as diverse as constructing rockets to building robots.

For more information, click here.

A senior lecturer in School of Chemical Engineering & Analytical Science at the University of Manchester in the UK is the lucky recipient of a Research Development Fellowship by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Biochemist Dr Gillian Stephens received one of 16 fellowships - with each being awarded up to £1.7m. Lasting between three to five years, they allow researchers to focus entirely on their research.

Stephens will use her fellowship for biofuels research.

Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, said: "It is vital that we nurture scientists throughout their careers, as they will be essential to helping us tackle the major challenges we face."

We'd like to give a belated congratulations to Daniel Hulgan, the winner of the 2009 National "You Be the Chemist" (YBTC) Challenge held by the Chemical Educational Foundation (CEF) on June 19, 2009.

Held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, the competition between 15 students from across the country brought together almost 100 chemical industry representatives, family members and educators.

The winner Daniel Hulgan is an 8th grader at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Nabil Shaikh, an 8th grader at Exeter Junior High School in Reading, Pennsylvania, came in 2nd place, and Siddhant Shah, an 8th grader at City Middle School in Naugatuck, Connecticut, placed 3rd.

The YBTC Challenge involves students correctly answering a series of questions on chemistry.

The CEF, founded in 1989, is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, US, and is dedicated to fostering a greater understanding of the science of chemistry, the benefits of chemicals and the importance of chemical safety awareness,

By Lara Mcnamee

According to a BBC news story '10,000 extra university places'  the UK government says there will be 10,000 more university places in England this autumn, mainly in maths, science, technology and engineering.

Announcing the details, UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: "By making available 10,000 extra places in science, technology and maths we are not only helping more individuals with the ambition and ability to go to university but also investing in this country's future.

"Our expansion of higher education is more important now than ever as we continue to invest in a highly skilled workforce to win the jobs of the future and lead the way in building Britain's future."
 

by Anna Jagger

ExxonMobil is sponsoring two-week summer science camps held at US universities during July. Organised by the Harris Foundation, the camps are aimed at encouraging middle school children, particularly from under-represented populations, that science, technology, engineering and maths are fun.

Here's a press release from ExxonMobil.

by Elaine Burridge

Take a look at Anne Montgomery's advice regarding a career in the bioprocessing industry.

It contains some good information and practical advice for anyone considering working in the biotech sector.

by Elaine Burridge

The University of Delaware in the US is rejoicing after winning a fourth consecutive graduate training grant. The grant, which totals $1.3m over five years, is from the Chemistry Biology Interface (CBI) Predoctoral training program and funded by the National Institutes of General Medicine.

The program provides extra opportunities for doctoral students in the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biological Sciences and Chemical Engineering.

Visit the website for more information.

The chemical sector desperately needs new recruits - but there aren't only opportunities for boys!

That was the message conveyed to some 40 girls going into sixth and seventh grades who attended a chemistry day camp on Saturday. They took part in numerous experiments and demonstrations, giving them an insight into a possible career in science.

The aspiring young chemists participated in numerous hands-on projects including making soap and snow globes, extracting iron from breakfast cereal, and filling balloons with carbon dioxide.

The event was run by the East Central Illinois Women Chemists Committee and sponsored by the East Central Illinois section of the American Chemical Society and the University of Illinois Department of Chemistry. Around two dozen undergraduate and graduate chemistry students and staff members were on hand to help the girls with the experiments.

"We want them to see that chemistry is everywhere," said Lynne Miller, a professor of organic chemistry. "Science is not just for boys."

Next Saturday, another day camp will be held for girls going into eighth and ninth grades.

In next week's issue of ICIS Chemical Business you'll find a letter from our markets editor, Andy Brice, giving the industry a heads-up about the campaign.

Here is a PDF of the article:

icb_letters_jc_6.pdf

By Lara McNamee

City University, based in London, UK, has recently launched a new Master of Arts (MA) course in science journalism.

City University states that the course has been designed in response to a 'rapidly expanding vein of journalism'. Its aim is to improve science journalism by training potential students to be a critical consumer of scientific information, whilst ensuring that they receive practical professional journalism training.

The course is aimed at people who want to train as professional science, environment technology and medical journalists and prepares the student for a wide range of professional science journalism careers in print, broadcast and new media as well as, public relations and communication.

Led by ex-BBC science journalist Connie St. Louis, at the end of the course you will be able to work in any form of science and health journalism both in specialized publications or general journalism outlets including newspapers, magazines online and the broadcast media.

Click here for more details.

by Elaine Burridge

Congratulations to the UK's Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) which has just been awarded the Valladolid University Chemical Engineering Medal for its role in academic and professional performance.

The Spanish university is the first IChemE accredited course in Spain, and IChemE director of regional networks and membership support Justin Blades expects further accreditation interest in the country.

The two will jointly stage an accreditation and membership workshop in Spain in November. Contact Justin Blades for more information at jblades@icheme.org.

Blades says that the IChemE's accreditation has helped the university to become part of the Erasmus student exchange programme, bringing students from all over the world to Valladolid and giving Spanish students the opportunity to experience chemical engineering education internationally.

by Elaine Burridge

Johnston Community College in Johnston, North Carolina, US, is offering new courses for technicians as part of a retraining and back to work scheme.

From this autumn, the college is offering extra BioWork courses which are a 136-hour program for careers as entry-level technicians in bioprocessing, pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing.

The programs take around 60 students.

Anyone interested in the BioWork course should contact Leslie Isenhour on (+1) 919 209 2593, or visit here.

It's great to see that OMV and Borealis have contributed €3m to help expand four new departments within the School of Technical Science at Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria, and support the launch of new plastic engineering degree programmes.

From the start of the winter term 2009/10 in October, a Bachelors degree in Plastic Engineering as well as a Masters degree in Industrial Plastic Engineering will be offered for the first time. The Masters degree in Plastic Engineering will follow in October 2010. Both master's programmes will be offered in English with Plastic Engineering, Polymer Chemistry and mechatronics as the cornerstones of the new programmes.

"With the new Plastic Engineering programme, Johannes Kepler University meets the requirements of the industry for highly educated specialists and researchers who will support the growth in our industry," says Alfred Stern, Borealis Vice President Innovation & Technology.

The registration period runs until October 29, you can sign-up online here.

With science to take on an even more important role in the future, it is imperative that science in the UK should be immune to any budget cuts, according to Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Suggestions that the government is telling funding agencies in the university sector to plan for budgets being slashed by as much as 20% would be disastrous for science, he says.

"Unless UK science is shielded from this reduction, the country would not be able to address the energy, climate change, water, health and overall sustainability challenges ahead," says Pike. "Worse still, the most able scientists would join the 'brain drain' across the Atlantic, and leave the nation even more vulnerable to industrial and societal decline."

Research and development expenditure in the US is set to rise to 3% of GDP compared with only 1.8% currently seen in the UK.

"Any further decline here would send an extraordinarily negative signal to the science community, both domestically and internationally, and raise doubts over the delivery of the country from the current recession," he adds.

US agribusiness major Cargill said it has donated $10,000 to Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences to expand the school's biotechnology curriculum.

"Prior to receiving this generous donation from Cargill, we had limited resources and equipment to advance our biotechnology courses," said Lucille Shaw, master teacher and FFA advisor at the school. "This goes a long way toward helping us equip our lab and support our students."

Cargill's donation comes on the heels of the company opening a new, biobased polyols manufacturing plant on Chicago's South side. The Torrence Avenue plant, which began production in Sept. 2008, makes Cargill's soybean-based BiOH® brand polyols used in polyurethane products such as flexible foam cushioning for furniture, bedding, and automotive products.

The donation will also go toward two college scholarships for seniors who are planning to attend four-year schools and major in agricultural studies, said Cargill.

Dow Corning's solar joint venture firm Hemlock Semiconductor donated $2 million to purchase lab equipment for a new Chemical Engineering Technology building at Austin Peay State University (APSU) in Clarksville, TN.

The money will be utilized to design, engineer and purchase the equipment for the "hands-on" lab stations where students will have the opportunity to run several chemical processes such as distillation, pump and tank operations, filtration and instrumentation.

I know for a fact how important these hands-on lab processing equipments remembering my school's wonderful (although a little outdated at that time) pilot processing lab.

The new laboratory will probably churn out eager Chemical Engineers just in time for Hemlock's planned polysilicon manufacturing facility in Clarksville, which will start in late 2012.

Great news for the UK and Europe's chemical industry. According to the country's Institute of Chemical Engineers, 10,068 applications have been received for university places, 18% up on 2008.

It seems like the UK has been something of a success story in recent years. Between 2001 and 2008 the number of chemical engineering students has doubled, bucking earlier downward trends.

During our campaign we'll aim to highlight the good practice which has given these results.

According to the press release, IChemE Chief Executive, David Brown welcomed a record number of applications to study chemical engineering at UK universities and urged Government not to cap student places.

Please reply to this post if you are a student or have any experience of UK chemical engineering training.

How much does the public really know about science? Do you think you know more about science than the average American? Why not try this short multiple choice science quiz and compare your scores with 1,005 others who dared to take the test?

The quiz was posed by the Pew Research Center to coincide with the launch of its new study of science and its impact on society.

The research, carried out with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, found that despite the bad economy, 67% of scientists say it is either a very good time (17%) or a good time (50%) to begin a career in their scientific field. They are also pretty upbeat about state of their profession: three-quarters (76%) say this is generally a good time for science and nearly as many (73%) say it is good time for their scientific specialty.

The quiz allows you to compare your science IQ with the average scores of men and women; with college graduates as well as those who didn't attend college; with people who are your age as well as with younger and older Americans.

To read the full study, click here.

The IChemE is offering a prize of $10,000 to the entrant who best demonstrates chemical engineering innovation and excellence that supports people living on less than $2 a day.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Award is sponsored by India's Reliance Industries and the $10,000 sum will be donated to support and extend the winning project.

Last year's winner was a partnership between India's Bengal Engineering and Science University and Lehigh University in the US who developed an arsenic-filtering water treatment system.

Closing date for entries is 31 July.

Go to link for more information.

Nearly 50 undergraduates are spending the summer at the University of Delaware's Center for Composite Materials (CCM).

Previous summer programs have typically had 30-35 students, but more funding this year has enabled the university to increase offers.

Some students have managed to turn their research project at CCM into a senior thesis for their degree.

Click on the link to ready the article.

The National Skills Academy (NSA) has announced that Scotland is to get its own NSA for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Scottish training organisations in the industry will be able to apply for accreditation from the NSA for the first time. The NSA for the process industries, which also includes polymer companies as well as any oil and gas firms that do not work offshore, is in talks with the Scottish Enterprise in an attempt to secure funding for the scheme.

There are seven academy hubs in England and Wales, funded over the past two years by a £4.5m government grant from Westminster. A Scottish hub would likely be based in Stirling.


The Scottish academy is being backed by Tom Crotty, CEO INEOS Olefins and Polymers, based at Grangemouth.

"Employers will benefit from using industry-specific training providers who understand what we want and how we want it delivered, and all to a new gold standard developed by the academy and Cogent Sector Skills Council," says Crotty.

For more on this, click this link.

Click here for more on INEOS.

The Kanawha Valley chemical industry is looking for up to 200 workers to fill high-paying jobs.

They're introducing a one-year training program for those interested. After completing training, you'll be eligible for positions starting at $45,000 per year.

If you're interested, just click the link for more information.

It's interesting to see what sort of activities are being promoted by other global industries to encourage their younger staff.

The Swiss Institute of Feed Technology has been running a special course to give graduates vocational skills relevant to a career in this sector. They undertook a seven-month preparatory correspondence course and a subsequent seven-week intensive training course in Uzwil, Switzerland. The students dealt with 21 subjects and had to pass no fewer than 12 intermediate tests.

This entitles them to the much sought-after diploma qualifying them as Feed Production Engineer.

It was truly global, with entrants from from South Africa, Spain, Finland, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. And also for the first time ever, Namibia and Trinidad/Tobago.


picture credit All About Feed

By Lara McNamee

During my day to day searching for information for ICIS company intelligence and chemical intelligence I stumbled upon this student focused US website Go Get Papers and found that it has a vast collection of papers, questions and videos under a range of different subjects.

If you're interested in becoming a chemical engineer then this link may be of interest to you.

It's not every day you get to rub shoulders with Nobel Prize Winners but 60 lucky chemistry students have been doing just that for the past week.

Germany's Henkel helped to take the young scientists to Lindau on the shores of Lake Constance for the annual Nobel Prize-Winner Conference that was first held in 1951. They were among some 580 students from 67 countries who had convened to discuss sustainable chemistry during the week-long meeting from June 28 to July 3.

While there, Henkel also invited them to an exclusive dinner where they could talk to two of the Nobel Prize winners and members of the company's senior management. The applicants - some of the most promising scientific talents - were put forward by their universities and research institutions.

"Forging personal contacts with committed students is of great importance for us. The dinner provided a good opportunity to get to know a range of young yet already highly qualified scientists from around the world," said Jessica Thiel, global head of talent, leadership and learning.

By John Richardson

Are you ever glad you are more towards the end rather than the beginning of your career - and just because the rose garden or the golf course are beckoning?

This has certainly been the case for me in working with (and I genuinely mean with - not just the false man management-speak meaning of the word) undergraduates from the National University of Singapore's Chemical Engineering Department.

ICIS training has employed interns from the NUS for the last three years.

I have been impressed (and also mightily relieved that I won't be competing with them for jobs!) at the students' ability to think outside the box on all the big issues from the economy to environmental challenges. It almost goes without saying, given the quality of science-based education in Singapore, that they also possess excellent chemicals engineering knowledge.

This is the result of a coordinated government policy aimed at supporting the Singapore chemical industry's need for a constant stream of new talent.

The NUS runs its degree course in chemical engineering with Temasek Polytechnic offering a diploma.

And on Jurong Island, where Singapore's chemicals production hub is located, the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences carries out process and application research.

When you talk to undergraduates you realise that apart from being scientifically literate (not a particularly widespread aptitude back in my home country of the UK) they are, as I said, aware of the environmental issues.

They want to make a contribution to finding solutions to this problem, rather than ignorantly condemning an industry which is essential to our modern-day way of life.

It's also worth mentioning the work of the Economic Development Board in upgrading the skills of industry employees as part of efforts to keep people working in chemicals during the current downturn.

Details about Singapore's success in training chemicals engineering - and keeping them in the industry - will be provided over the next few weeks.

By Lara McNamee

German major BASF is really making a firm commitment to students by offering the chance to complement their studies with practical experience within the company and the possibility of employment at the end.

If you have considered writing your bachelor, diploma or master thesis at BASF, then it states on the company website that it will not only provide you with advice and support all through your research project, but will also support you whichever career you chose to embark on within the company.

But BASF doesn't stop there! The company also offers students the chance of getting a job in their vacation period.

Whether you want to work in R&D, engineering and production or in a business and corporate function, BASF says that there is a place for you: a "career-building experience" and a great "learning tool from people already in the trade".

If this is the kind of opportunity you are looking for, then BASF check out this link.

Has anyone ever got a job via this route? If so then please let us know...

The clock is ticking for students wishing to apply for the Bayer Fellowship Program... applications for the scheme should be submitted before 31 July.

According to the German producer's website, the program is aimed at those studying biology, biochemistry, biotechnology and biological process engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering, pharmaceutics and physics.

"The Bayer Fellowship Program enables young people with scientific ambitions to realize individual projects and study plans both within and outside of Germany through the granting of scholarships."

The Board of Trustees of the Bayer Science and Education Foundation previously awarded scholarships totaling €142,000 to 21 students.

Applicants should have good final school marks as well as a particularly good intermediate diploma or an above-average bachelor's exam.

To download the application form, visit here or to read the rules and conditions, click here.