Marley Samways MChem Chemistry, 2017

Undergraduate student

The course here is great; the work is appropriately challenging and the lecturers make an effort to highlight and explain the relevance of the subject material to real life.

I am greatly interested by the field of chemistry and the fact that it has a diverse range of direct and indirect applications to real life. The University has an excellent reputation and a lot of world-leading research is carried out here by the chemistry department and others. Additionally, the location within the country is excellent, and travel to other cities from Southampton is very easy.

The course here is great; the work is appropriately challenging and the lecturers make an effort to highlight and explain the relevance of the subject material to real life, so that the material never becomes too abstract. The teaching staff in chemistry are excellent and all have a genuine passion for their respective subject areas. The course content is excellent too – each module has multiple problem-based learning workshops, as well as the fact that the lecturers are more than willing to explain matters further outside of the allotted times.

Each of the undergraduate teaching labs has plenty of room and equipment for students and we are able to use very expensive equipment and materials from an early stage. There are also plenty of computer stations within the chemistry building to assist in the completion of assignments, with access to relevant software packages. 

I worked on a research project in the chemistry department, over summer 2015. I enjoyed the project very much as it allowed me to experience real scientific research in an academic context and I made a real contribution. I was made incredibly welcome by the group members and had plenty of opportunities to contribute to new and relevant research. The project was very challenging, but also very rewarding.

My application for a 2016 summer research bursary from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) was successful. This vacation project is part of a larger programme to explore the behaviour of biological membranes using computer simulations. The results will contribute to this research programme and will feature in future publications.

In the future, I plan on completing a PhD in computational chemistry.