Chemistry graduate Oliver talks about what he's been doing following his degree

Hi, everybody! My name is Oliver Barton, and I am a graduate of the University of Chester’s BSc Chemistry course.

What is Oliver doing since completing his studies with Chester?

I graduated in August 2023, and was accepted onto a Master’s degree at Imperial College London shortly afterwards. Throughout this year, I have been completing research in the field of Digital Chemistry, mainly under my immediate supervisor Dr. Joao Pedro Malhado. Our research’s purpose was to develop a machine learning model to predict molecular orbital wavefunctions for molecules in the excited state, focusing specifically on an electrocyclic reaction that can be described via the Woodward-Hoffman rules.

Those of you who haven’t yet had the privilege of completing your BSc in Chemistry at Chester may not understand every aspect of the goal stated above. For myself, it was only through the work of lecturers like Noha Ziedan and Gabriele Wagner that I was able to obtain a strong basis in these advanced chemistry concepts which enabled me to complete my current research.

My exact passion for quantum chemistry actually came from my first-year course with Noha studying fundamental concepts like molecular orbital theory and learning the meaning of an angstrom.

Oliver's academic support and experiences at Chester

To obtain acceptance to Imperial College London, I needed to achieve at least a 2:1, and was actually able to obtain a First Class Degree because of the support of my lecturers at Chester, and the resources we were given to prepare for our exams.

I really enjoyed my time at the University of Chester, in large part due to a great friend I made during my degree, Ben, who I still talk to regularly, as he is completing his PhD at the University of Sussex.

During my BSc, I learnt many valuable skills, such as introductory Python coding, and independent research skills, which greatly aided me in completing my Masters’ degree, and I was able to refine my presentation skills, which helped me a lot during my interview process at Imperial, and the rest of the course, where we have done many presentations as part of every module as well as my final Master’s research project.

This is another area where my experiences at Chester helped me: academic research. For my industrial placement I chose to do an in-house research project with Mark Mc Auley which ended up turning into my final year research project at Chester. Through this experience I learned two things that have shaped my vision for the future. The first is that I much prefer computational research to lab-based research, as my projects at Chester were purely computational, which is what inspired me to do an MSc in Digi Chem. The second, is that there is never enough time in the world to be fully satisfied with your research, and you should take every opportunity that your supervisor gives you on a degree to start early, within reason of course.

Although this might sound contradictory to my previous point, I want to remind any students reading this that they should always take time to do something that makes them happy. During my time at Imperial I spent about 60-70 hours a week working on my research, and whilst I am very proud of the work I have done, I would have worked another 70 hours more per week if I could have possibly done so. It is a good thing that I even stopped at that point, and if you feel burnt out or overstressed by your research, take a day, or a few hours, or even ten minutes, to step away, and do something that makes you feel calm. All that time stressing adds up, and you’ll get to where you want to be even if you take a small break.

That being said, I would like to let everybody reading this know that more than anything, Chester taught me that I should always do what is best for myself, and I learnt this lesson from the care, respect, and kindness afforded to me by the Chemistry team at Chester. Without them I would not have ended up at Imperial College London, which is now ranked the #1 University in the UK and #2 Worldwide by QS World University Rankings. I was very worried that, by attending a non-Russell Group for my BSc, I would never be able to get into a highly ranked university for my graduate level degree, however, I think attending Chester made it more possible than attending a Russell Group would have, because I needed the nurturing environment that Chester provided.

If you want to be encouraged to learn in a way that works for you. If you have a desire to thrive in an environment that can help you achieve your career goals. If you want to be taught in a more personal environment, making direct contact with your lecturers in a way that you could not elsewhere, then you should attend the University of Chester, because our motto “let the teacher teach” is more accurately said as “help the students learn”.

Want to find out more?

Visit our webpages to find out more about our Chemistry BSc degree, or come and have a look around our facilities and chat to staff at our next Open Day.