Christopher Mallinson MChem Chemistry, 2012

Undergraduate student

Hi, I'm Christopher Mallinson and I studied MChem Chemistry within Chemistry at the University of Southampton.

As well as studying for my degree, I have also been given the chance to take part in a number of outreach opportunities, which enables me to present chemistry and science to a wider audience to help improve understanding and involvement.

When I was at school and college, I was involved in activities run by university students, which really helped me to engage with science from an early age, and certainly influenced my decision to study chemistry at degree level.

Now that I am at university myself, I wanted to make sure that I could pass my knowledge and experience onto other younger pupils, who may be thinking about taking a similar path as me. As well as studying for my degree, I have been given the chance to take part in a number of outreach opportunities, which enable me to present chemistry and science to a wider audience to help improve understanding and involvement. I really enjoy the opportunity to get involved as it is an invaluable experience to help educate younger pupils about the world of science. It also helps me to develop a range of new skills, and I get to have great fun while doing it!

I have found the last two years of my chemistry degree challenging but now that I am in the third year most of the concepts are coming together and chemistry is becoming more interesting. The teaching labs during first year and second year were hugely beneficial in helping to get ready for research projects from simply time management to working safely around others in the lab.

The optional modules that can be chosen each year have helped to tailor my degree more to my interests, which are physics and inorganic chemistry.