11 Nov 2013
What does your current job
involve?
My job is Technical Support and
Development Manager, so I support
customers, people developing products,
our own sales people, and people in
our company, on the technical aspects
of using our products. For example,
how their inclusion might improve an
existing formulation or using them in new
applications.
And what is that product?
The company I work for, CP Kelco, is
a producer and innovator of naturally
derived water-soluble polymers. They
hydrate in the water, modifying its
rheology and the way it flows and
therefore find use in many different
applications, from food, to oil
field drilling, mining, construction,
agrochemicals etc; all that is needed
is some water somewhere in the
formulation. I therefore have an
understanding of these applications
but have particularly specialised in
construction.
Did you have an interest in
science from childhood?
I've always liked making and
understanding how things work. At
secondary school, chemistry was
something I quickly latched onto from
the moment our chemistry teacher
(Mr Clarke - I still remember him!)
showed us the first piece of zinc being
dropped into an acid to make hydrogen
and the subsequent 'bang' he made.
I was interested and hence hooked
and thankfully, I found chemistry was
something I was reasonably good at.
Career-wise I have taken a bit of a convoluted path: Initially I was going to study agriculture and farming, as I'd worked on farms during school holidays and loved the experience. But just before I took my A-levels, I decided that wasn't for me so I got a job at British Gypsum working in their quality control department. They sponsored me to go back to education, where I did chemistry and science-related A-levels and after a while there, I decided I'd go and get a degree. So off I went to Loughborough University.
Like many others, I found university life-changing and my interest in chemistry and science was reinforced. My degree was a sandwich course and I spent a year at Beechams working on scale-up synthesis. That married my interests in chemistry with making things, because we were not only investigating routes to synthesise novel compounds, we were building the reactors to make them in. It was fundamental in getting my degree because it made all the things you learn at university real and make sense: otherwise you can learn things parrot fashion if you're not careful, not necessarily understanding it. I would certainly recommend a sandwich year.
Was that year one of the
significant career milestones?
Definitely; in that year I made the
connection with what I had studied
and understood it all. It allowed me
to return to university and really apply
myself to get the degree I wanted. That
time at Beechams was so valuable. After
Loughborough, I did not go directly
into chemistry, working for a while at
Courtaulds textiles. But I quickly realised
I had to go back to doing something
technical and even laboratory-based, and
that's when I got the position here at CP
Kelco. I've done other things in my career,
but ultimately I kept coming back to this
sort of work.
What are the most important
things you've learned so far in
your career?
Stay inquisitive. Stay curious. Keep
looking, keep learning and keep trying
to develop and apply what you learn.
This keeps me motivated and if you keep
motivated, you'll get the most out of
things. It gets me out of bed and it makes
me I feel that I'm contributing. When you
enjoy what you do, everything falls into
place.
How did you first become
involved in SCI and what has
that involvement meant for
you?
I got involved with SCI when I joined
CP Kelco. SCI was running courses and
seminars relevant to what I was doing
and which interested me. So I kept going
to more and joined SCI at the same
time. Since then, the thing I've liked
most about SCI has been C&I magazine,
because although I may be working in
a slightly focused and narrow field, it
keeps me abreast of what else is going
on out in the world of science, and more
importantly how science is contributing
towards business and industry.
If you hadn't pursued a career
in science, what would you be
doing now?
That is a tough one! I could still have
been working at British Gypsum, or I
might possibly have gone back into
agriculture. But I think that if I hadn't
done any of these, I would have loved to
have been a motorcycle mechanic with
a top race team. Motorcycles are my
passion, and I think that would've been
a great career - going around the world,
making bikes go faster.
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