Tuesday 1 September 2020

Angela Avramovska - Summer STEM Virtual Work Placement Student - Weekly Reports

 

In April SATRO took the unprecedented (and sad) decision to suspend the Research Programme for this year due to COVID-19. We asked all our providers for a 'day in the life of' summaries to give the students a flavour of the many types of roles that are available in the professional environments. 

Following SATRO's hard work to develop an online policy. In May, we reached out to our wonderful providers to propose a virtual solution and to get around any social distancing rules. The response was amazing. We asked for suitable titles that the students could research over the summer and devise a short essay and either a PP or a poster with their findings. 

All students have been asked to provide a weekly update on their experience - please see below to see what Angela has been up to so far! 


 Week One

"I chose the chemistry question- ‘How can catalysts improve our lives in the 21st century?’. One of the reasons as to why I chose to research this is because I wanted to widen my knowledge about ways in which catalysts can benefit us, beyond what was taught at school. As there are many challenges that we have to face in the 21st century, some of those being climate change, storage for energy and an increase demand for food, searching for potential ways in which catalysts can help tackle these interested me.

I started off my research by going over the basics of catalysts and the different types- heterogeneous and homogeneous. I then looked into the history of catalysts, how they have been developed, by who and how they have been benefiting the world in the past. My focus then shifted to the current uses, that being the infamous Haber-Bosch process and catalytic converters in cars. I also looked at the overall advantages of catalysts that have and still are improving our lives. It was challenging to find how catalysts can further benefit us as they already do so in many different areas. However, reading articles and looking at interviews from professors and scientists have helped me gain knowledge on current research that is going on. This then allowed me to discover new ways on how the development of catalysts can improve our lives. I gathered further understanding on making biofuels from waste materials, with the help of microorganism-derived catalysts as well as storage of energy from renewable resources, which I will be looking more into. So far, I have really enjoyed the research as I was able to delve into new information and find discoveries that are of a great interest of mine."

- Angela Avramovska 

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