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.

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.

Businesses seeking to recruit students for placements 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 finalists going to your placement will have experience in all areas of chemistry and are able to take on any practical role during the placement

Our MChem students undertake a substantial practical module in the third year in preparation for an independent research project

Our students enrol in employability and reflective practice modules before and during the placement to give them the skills they need to excel in the workplace

Our Programme of Events

Lancaster Chemistry actively works with industry partners to enhance student employability and drive innovation.

In addition to undergraduate industry placements, our undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts are keen to engage in summer placements, internships, and shorter-term projects, offering flexible routes for organisations to build connections and identify future recruits.

We welcome industrial contributions to our undergraduate engagement programme, including guest lectures, careers events, and site visits. These activities provide an excellent platform for organisations to showcase their work, highlight career pathways, and engage directly with students considering roles in the coatings sector.

Beyond student engagement, we are keen to develop collaborative relationships with industry. Whether you are exploring new challenges, seeking academic expertise, or looking to access specialist equipment and facilities, we offer opportunities for meaningful collaboration.

We are always open to discussions around collaborative R&D, knowledge exchange, and innovation partnerships that address real-world industrial challenges.

If you are interested in participating on any of these initiatives, please contact the Director of Engagement Dr M. Paz Munoz-Herranz or discover other ways to engage with us through our Business pages.

Alex, a student, smiling and staring forwards — Alexandar Nash - Industrial Trainee at Syngenta

Alex's industrial placement

I decided to do a placement year since I thought the opportunity to earn money whilst I was still studying for a master's really useful, and the fact that it's a fourth year placement means I can go straight into the workforce off the back of it.

I applied for a variety of roles with cover letter and CV around September/October time, then most of my interviews were around November time. Most were multistage, with later stages involving full days on site at the companies that I'd applied for. Interviews often comprised of various sections e.g. personal, technical, lab-based.

Our industrial placement coordinator helped a lot in terms of sending through job adverts that she thought might interest me as soon as they were posted, and then after I received my placement offer she took care of all of the paperwork between the university and the company.

I am currently working as an Industrial Trainee at Syngenta where I have been making a variety of novel small organic molecules and designing routes to synthesise other novel organic molecules. A lot of the organic teaching material has been very useful when it comes to designing routes to these new molecules.

Most of my work is lab-based so a lot of the skills developed primarily in my organic labs have been helpful in getting into the lab and getting started with my own reactions towards the start of my year -in particular having experience in advanced techniques has really helped.

I've been gaining a lot of new skills related to synthesis, and also training with new machines such as using HPLC machines. I would say that the main skills have been related to presenting my work, and making sure that I know my chemistry well enough to accurately explain exactly what is happening each time. Overall, I am really pleased with my industrial placement year so far.

Alexandar Nash - Industrial Trainee at Syngenta

Latest News

Chemistry with Industrial Placement degree programme receives RSC accreditation

10 April 2025

We are delighted to announce the Royal Society of Chemistry have accredited our recently created Chemistry with Industrial Placement MChem degree programme. This joins our three established Chemistry degree programmes – Chemistry BSc, Chemistry MChem and Chemistry with Study Aboard MChem – as being accredited.

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

29 May 2024

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.

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

25 October 2023

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.