A Peak Inside Peak Proteins: Year 12 Students Come for a Site Visit for Some Career Inspiration

Last week a group of 15 sixth form students from All Hallows Catholic College came to visit Peak Proteins as part of their NCS (National Citizen Service) programme to help grow their employability skills. The afternoon was organised by cell scientist Sarah Beck and protein scientist Naimah Begum.

After welcoming the bustling students, Sarah, Naimah and Martin presented to the students a brief overview of what Sygnature Discovery and Peak Proteins do as part of a drug discovery CRO. The students then gained an insight into the many job roles/areas that are available at Sygnature Discovery such as finance, marketing, HR, IT and of course science! We hope that this showed the students how it takes many different people from all sorts of professional backgrounds to come together and help run a successful company and show that there are many other non-scientific roles to be filled within the company. The students were also lucky to see for the first time the complete Peak Proteins Lego set built by Steve Harborne!

After the short presentation the students then headed for the most exciting part of any site visit, the lab tour! Sarah led the tour of the cells lab whilst Naimah led the protein, crystallisation and MS lab. These lab tours are so important in giving an insight to the real-life science that happens on a daily basis. By showing the students real life protein purification preps, equipment and scientists, we aim to give students an inspiring insight into lab life as a scientist. This is important in helping to potentially kickstart some students’ curiosity in science and help push their careers in STEM subjects. Peak Proteins regularly pushes for local students to gain this experience and is evident in our efforts by organising work experience, student placements and visiting local schools and career fairs.

We hope to see some of the students return for work experience in June!