Freya Bowden - Summer STEM Work Placement Student - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how Freya is getting on with her STEM placement! 

Week One 

"During my first week at Headway I spent Monday doing background research and looking through the data the centre had. Tuesday, I spent the day with clients, helping out with their worksheets and watching the session on memory. It was interesting to see how the clients are presented with different problems (symptoms) after their acquired brain injury. 

Wednesday I spent doing further research, reading papers and accumulating data from the survey on mobile phones carried out by the clients who attended Tuesdays session. Thursday again I spent with clients, and Friday I spent beginning my report. It’s been an interesting week, I’ve enjoyed learning more about memory, acquired brain injuries and the clients."

- Freya Bowden

Lois Whitelegg - Summer STEM Work Placement - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how Lois is getting on with her STEM placement!

Week One

"During my first week I was able to become familiar with the work that is being done by the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young and the Cardiac Investigations Department at St. George’s Hospital. I was able to observe the diagnostic tools that are used to diagnose heart conditions, such as ECGs, Echocardiograms and Cardiopulmonary Exercise Tests. 

I have started to look into different heart conditions, specifically those which affect younger people, which has allowed me to start gaining an understanding of why research into inherited cardiac conditions is so important. I have also been able to start thinking about possible ideas for a project."

Week Two

"This week I decided to base my project on the psychological effects of a heart condition on an athlete. This is something that little research has been done on despite the large lifestyle adaptions a heart condition may lead to, particularly regarding physical activity. As well as this I have been able to shadow doctors in their clinics with patients, which has been a very valuable and interesting experience in gaining an understanding of different heart conditions and seeing the effective ways in which doctors interact with their patients."

Week Three 

"During my week I have started to research into methods of surveying patients, as well as writing my own survey to use for my study. I was also able to again be involved with the diagnostic processes, which has helped to deepen my knowledge of different heart conditions such as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. 

Furthermore I was able to shadow a doctor who did a Heart Failure patient ward round allowing me to go to various wards in the hospital and see the effects of Heart Failure on a range of patients in a different environment than I had been in previously, only seeing outpatients."

Week Four

"Now I have started to conduct my survey on patients and start analysing the responses. Also I have been able to assist in setting up the diagnostic tests for patients and assist in writing reports for patients. This has showed me the importance of accurately documenting the results of diagnostic tests so that they can effectively be used to help in diagnosing the patient." 

- Lois Whitelegg 

Sina Bastani - Summer STEM Work Placement - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how Sina is getting on with his STEM placement!

Week One 

"I have learnt quite a lot only in the first week of my placement. We had the privilege to attend lectures given by Dr. Radu about semi-conductors, something I was entirely unfamiliar with but Radu managed to keep the lecture interesting and intriguing by involving us in his talk. He asked us to mimic the structure of semi-conductors with Play-Doh and demonstrated how its construction can be modified to maximise space. This then got followed by another brief talk from Dr. Vlad which taught us how to make a proper science paper. During the rest of the week, I familiarised myself with my subject at hand and learned valuable lessons about science research." 

Week Two 

"The second week was eye opening for me. My teammate and I got stuck on a certain aspect of our research and tried to make sense of it using our combined logic and by conversing with each other. After a few more hours of research, we completely understood the topic we used to be stuck on which was very rewarding. We also had the opportunity to visit the clean room, which is a laboratory at the University of Surrey designed to reduce contamination at maximum. The lab technician also introduced us to the most important pieces of technology and instruments in the clean room." 

Week Three 

"During the third week, our time was mostly spent experimenting. Again, we have come across a dead end when our experiment did not work properly and showed unenthusiastic results. We have tried to use our common sense and had a crack at working out the problem with the help of Dr. Vlad, but we have not come up with a significant solution. In a desperate attempt, I emailed the scientist that worked on the scientific paper we were concerned with and with much satisfaction, I received an email back from Australia by that same scientist informing us of ways to possibly improve our experiment. We have also spent time in the mechanical engineering department to test the tensile strength of our material." 

- Sina Bastani

Hannah Wagner - Summer STEM Work Placement - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how Hannah is getting on with her STEM placement!

Week One

"The aim of my project is to create a nanotechnological mask using photolithography. Overall the current flows through transistors, which are semiconductor devices that are used to amplify or switch electronic signals and power. The process of photolithography involves indenting the base of a substrate using light. 

During my first week, I gained an understanding as to how semiconductors work to create transistors: by connecting the source, gate, drain, and semiconductor to an insulator, electric current is able to flow. 

However, voltage must also be applied to positively charge the gate and drain, which causes electrons begin to flow from the source to the drain via the semiconductor. Upon understanding how the semiconductor circuit works and doing research into the transistors, I was able to begin working on CAD programs to design more complex transistors." 

-Hannah Wagner

InKyu Kwon - Summer STEM Work Placement - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how InKyu is getting on with his STEM placement!

Week One

"The first week of my project at Surrey University was mostly spent familiarising myself with the campus and its various facilities as well as doing provisional research towards my project. My supervisor had already chosen for me to carry out an investigation into whether graphite pencil leads could be used to print an RC low-pass filter PCB. Researching various aspects of the project that could help with the investigation was not an easy task as the project idea at hand was completely original and not many related studies had been done before."

Week Two

"The second Monday marked the start of an intense week of experimental work, testing out various solvents for the graphite ink and substrates to print the ink on. It was not an easy process as our provisionally made inks clogged the printers, so a lot of time was spent cleaning them.

Unfortunately, by the end of the week, we had to resort a premade nanosilver ink which was not particularly successful either as it had very low conductance. However, we left the printed ink in an oven over the weekend to sinter, so hopefully we may have some success the following week."

-InKyu Kwon 

Bo-Yan Chung - Summer STEM Work Placement - Weekly Reports

The STEM placement students are sending us weekly blogs all about their experience in the world of work! 

Work experience is great and it provides students with many benefits whilst gaining skills and helping choose the right future career path for pupils. Having work experience on a Curriculum Vitae will make a person stand out to employers as they will notice they have motivation and a real passion for work. It will also help to boost a students confidence in themselves!

See how Bo-Yan is getting on with her STEM placement!

Week One 

"To try and summarise my research project in a few sentences, our aim is to cultivate low-cost electronics with materials from daily life by producing a conductive ink and printing it onto a substrate, preferably paper, using an inkjet printer. This greener and cheaper electronic could benefit others, especially those in less economically developed countries where more expensive materials are not as readily available. The materials used in electronics, such as silver, could be replaced, making common technology accessible to a wider range of people. 

The first week is predominantly research based. To understand and investigate our objectives, I researched the materials for our project and the methods that may be preferable for the process, focusing on environmentally friendly substances and approaches. I found reports previously written about similar research which would be used to later compare to our own findings, and read about the physical and chemical properties of materials we could use." 

Week Two 

"In the second week, we began experimenting - finding the right solvent for our conductive ink and testing out graphite as our conductor. Different substrates were used to test our circuit, such as paper, which would help us achieve the household items criteria. 

I also started working on my poster and report for the CREST award, and continued the research aspect of the project." 

Week Three 

"We continued our experimentation into the third week and realised grinding the graphite into particles small enough to pass through the inkjet nozzle was quite difficult. As a substitute, we used a prefabricated ink containing silver nanoparticles, but had a problem with the printing. After each circuit was printed, lines of missing ink were left, which resulted in a circuit with a full section that could not conduct. Through printing multiple layers of the circuit, we created a circuit that avoided the problem. 

On the Friday, we attended a nanotechnology lecture presented by one our supervisors and learnt how nature works at a nano-scale, through insects and viruses. The second part of the lecture was testing out the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) which used a focused beam of electrons to create an image that enables us to view objects at micro- and nano-scales."

Week Four

"To try an alternative printing method that would be more environmentally friendly for the project, I had screen-printed the layers one-by-one to fabricate the RC filter. The circuit was made using regular printing paper as the substrate, a pre-fabricated carbon-based electric paint as the connectives, and egg white was used for one of the components in the circuit. These materials used in the project accentuated the ‘green’ factor we were striving for.

On the Thursday of the fourth week, we had our SATRO poster presentation at the university to demonstrate all our hard work and to explain the aims for our projects."

Week Five

"Due to a small fault in the circuit, we had to change the design of the filter so that we could avoid the same problem of short circuiting. The filter previously made was not suitable due to limitations of the frequency generator. Therefore we changed the shape or size of the components, and also changed the substrate to watercolour card to reduce buckling due to the water content of the substances used.

 We eventually fabricated a screen-printed filter that could attenuate frequencies above 170kHz. This filter used low-cost materials that were not environmentally damaging, and was fabricated using a versatile and manual printing process. 

Week 5 was also focused on writing my report to collate all of the research I had previously done for the project, our results we had collected and conclude what we have achieved. 

Overall, this summer research placement has given me an amazing experience into the scientific field of electronics. I have had so much fun over the past 5 weeks and would like to thank SATRO and those who have helped me with the project."

- Bo-Yan Chung