Industrial Partners

A student and an academic working together on a Mass Spec machine

Launched in 2023, our MChem with Industrial Placement provides you with an opportunity to employ final year Chemistry students from the summer of 2025

Our Students

Our students can offer organisations an excellent opportunity to address a skill or resource shortage by benefiting from up-to-date scientific skills and knowledge, trial a new role, or research a new idea, saving valuable staff time with a low-cost resource. MChem students who undertake an industrial placement, do so in their fourth and final year of study.

Our first MChem cohort will go on placement in the academic year 2025-26.

Our cohort of current second year students will start looking for placements in the Autumn of 2024. Businesses seeking to recruit students for placements for the academic year 2025-26 are welcome to contact the Industrial placement coordinator Dr M. Paz Munoz-Herranz with information to pass directly on to our students. Our Chemistry Undergraduate and Postgraduate students are also interested in shorter summer placements, as well as any opportunities to learn and network with industry, all year round.

What can you expect from a Lancaster Chemistry student?

There are so many reasons why sponsoring our MChem students could be beneficial to you and your business:

Our brightest students enrol on the MChem degrees

Only students with the highest grades (a minimum of a 2.1 average) are permitted to embark on a placement year, meaning that you will have the choice of only our very best Chemistry students.

We will prepare them for working on your projects

After three years of study and practical work, our students will have more experience than those where the placement is traditionally completed in an earlier study year, meaning that they are well-prepared for working within a fast-paced chemistry industry.

We will support our students throughout the placement

Throughout the year, we will provide support for both our students and our hosts to ensure that both of you have a successful experience.

You get access to the very best of our graduates as potential employees

If the placement goes well, you may wish to offer the candidate a job. A final year placement positions our students to accept job offers and provide continuity in your organisation

How do we prepare our students for placement?

Our Programme of Events

We are developing a programme of events to support the building of connections between our Chemistry students and industry. Through our renewed partnership with OCCA, we ran our first Industry Insight Event for our chemistry undergraduate students in collaboration with OCCA, where speakers from the materials and coatings industry shared their career pathways.

We can collaborate with you to run industry specific skills workshops, organise visits to your business, welcome your staff as guest lecturers, and promote your opportunities directly to our students. If you are interested in participating on any of these initiatives, please contact the Industrial Placement coordinator Dr M. Paz Munoz-Herranz or discover other ways to engage with us.

Results from the Industry survey

The Chemistry Department at Lancaster University recently conducted a survey of employers within the Chemical Industry to find out what skills they thought were essential for chemistry graduates to be successful in the working world. Read about the results on our news pages.

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A group image of the industry experts who took part in the event, Left to Right, Roger Brown (Crown Paints Limited, Lead Scientist), Ann-Marie Etherington (OCCA/Kaleidoscope Colours, Commercial Director), Debbie Coombs (Milliken Industrials Limited, Senior Account Manager), James Sherrington (Victrex, Head of Research and Development), and Paul Carr (Oxerra, UK Sales Manager).

Careers for Future Chemists

On Wednesday the 24th April, the Chemistry Department, in partnership with the Oil and Colour Chemists Association (OCCA), hosted an Industry Insight Event for chemistry undergraduate students, with invited speakers from the materials and coatings industry, who shared their knowledge and experience of working in the materials and coating industry. 
A student and an academic working at a mass spec machine

Results for the Chemical Industry graduate skills survey released

At the end of 2023, the Chemistry Department at Lancaster University launched a survey looking for input from chemical industry regarding expectations of recent Chemistry Graduates. 
From left to right: John Barratt (Sika), Julie Walkers (The Vita Group), Delia Brustur (Pharmaron), Hannah Pear (iSH), James Sherrington (Victrex), Nick Evans (Head of Chemistry Department, LU), Richard Browm (Sygnature Discovery), Thomas Bensom (RSC), M. Paz Munoz-Herranz (Industrial Placement Coordinator, Chemistry, LU)

New degree (MChem with Industrial Placement) launch event a success

The Department of Chemistry at Lancaster University celebrated the launch of the new MChem with Industrial Placement degree with a half-day event on the 11th October.

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