Peak Proteins Welcomes Amelia Tollet

Peak Proteins is delighted to welcome Amelia Tollet who joins us for a three-month internship.  A second-year biochemistry student at the University of Liverpool, Amelia is keen to develop her laboratory skills and techniques and use them within a professional environment.

Studying Biochemistry

Amelia studied Maths, Chemistry and Biology to A level and was particularly interested in the mechanistic field of organic chemistry and its application in biology. Having just finished her second year of a Biochemistry BSc at the University of Liverpool, Amelia was looking to gain experience of working in industry to help her decide next steps once she has finished her degree.

Covid 19 disrupted the first year of Amelia’s degree, but she has completed three laboratory modules including “Techniques in Cell Biology”, “Advanced Biochemical Techniques” and Molecular Science”.  Amelia is looking forward to her third-year project which hopefully will also be laboratory based.

Amelia commented, “I’m very open minded at the moment in whether I continue my academic career or start a career in industry.  I wanted to understand what industry might offer to help me make the decision before I started my final year.”

Adding, “It was brilliant when Peak Proteins replied to my email and offered me a 3-month internship over the summer holidays.  I will also be writing up my experience as I’m completing a summer placement module which will count towards my degree.”

Amelia and Toby Allen load a HiTrap protein purification column.

Working at Peak Proteins

Amelia’s work internship will centre around a protein scientist role.  Shadowing Peak Proteins scientists Katie Jameson, Giles Hassell and Toby Allen, Amelia will be involved in the expression and purification of a wide variety of proteins.

“I’ve already discovered experiments don’t always work first time!” said Amelia.

Dr Christopher Cooper commented, “At Peak Proteins, we focused on firstly giving Amelia a good overview of laboratory work, where she can get to put her theoretical knowledge from her Biochemistry degree into practice. She has worked with a number of scientific staff at Peak already and has experienced and learnt a great deal in the time. Amelia is now working independently on a multi-construct protein purification approach to tackle a difficult human protein drug target for crystallisation.”

Life Outside Work

Amelia has just taken up painting and loves listening to music.  Having learned to play the keyboard and guitar, she has just started to learn to play drums.  With a love of learning languages, Amelia has continued learning Spanish in her spare time.