Page 12 - PERIODIC Magazine Issue 7

H
Making it appen

The Department of Chemistry’s cutting-edge research and innovative teaching
is facilitated by staff with a broad range of backgrounds and a huge range
of technical skills and expertise. The University, along with other leading
institutions, is a signatory to the Technician Commitment, an initiative led by
the Science Council to support and safeguard vital technical skills in higher

education and research. We talked with some of the people in Chemistry
whose professional work supports high-level research and helps to develop
and encourage the brilliant chemists of the future.

Since then, Nenad has trained and mentored several
other apprentices and young engineers, but their
number has become fewer in recent years. Nenad says:
”Lots of us in jobs like this are getting on now, but it is
really important that people keep coming to learn this
trade, because it takes at least six or seven years of
training to become competent at this kind of work. We
work at the very cutting edge of science, working with
the researchers to make prototype designs for their
experiments. A lot of the great things designed in the
last century have come from this laboratory – the glucose
sensor and the lithium ion battery, for example. When
you’re designing something new you don’t always know
exactly where it’s going to go, and that’s what makes the
work here so interesting. You’re doing things that have
never been done before.”

Muks Ali, Jennie Botham, Charlie
Farrell and Louise Hutchinson,
Nenad Vranješ , ICL Electronics Manager, with Alex Garzon Gonzalez, Teaching Lab Technicians
Electronics Technician
A team of highly skilled technicians works in
Nenad has worked in the Department of Chemistry the new teaching labs, designing, preparing
for over 40 years. He designs and builds the complex and testing experiments for undergraduate
electronic equipment used in experimental research. students. Jennie Botham has worked in the
Nenad explains: “We work at component level, with Oxford Chemistry labs for 39 years, having
many different circuit designs, and with UV-vis, FTIR started as a trainee after leaving school. She
spectrometers, X-rays and high-temperature furnaces, went on to take a chemistry degree while
and the kind of electronics we do covers a very wide working and bringing up two children, and has
field. A lot of electronics relies on maths, which I was supported not only students but also many of
pretty weak on when I started as an apprentice all those the new technicians who have joined over the
years ago. I’d left school without qualifications, but as I past years.
progressed in my career I studied and learned so much,
surprising myself by getting on to areas like calculus Mukarram Ali came to Oxford 18 months ago
and Fourier analysis. In total I did nine years of study on after doing a chemistry degree and working as a
the job, eventually culminating in a four year part-time school lab technician. He says: ”For me, one of
degree in electronic and electrical design and production the most rewarding things is that I come to work
at Middlesex University. That was hard work, with 6 to teach these students and I sometimes end up Louise
Hutchinson,
hour practical exams and weekend schools, so it was learning from them. It’s always interesting to work Mukarram Ali,
a proud moment when I finally got my BEng honours here with so many different personalities and we Jennie Botham
degree.” have a good group ethic in this place.” and Charlie
Farrell
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Periodic The Magazine of the Department of Chemistry