Product Development Scientist Intern (summer programme)

Job title: Product Development Scientist Intern (summer programme)

Location: Scale Space – 58 Wood Lane, London W12 7RZ

Hours: 40 hours per week

Salary: £13.15 per hour

The opportunity....

PFAS (Per/Poly fluorinated alkyl substances) represent a large family of toxic and persistent environmental pollutants which number over 13 000 different compounds. Over the past few years they have garnered much attention both in academic circles and more broadly the mainstream media owed to their high toxicity and ubiquitous presence in drinking water. It is imperative that real effort is made to remove PFAS from drinking water to protect environmental and human health.

This project will focus on the design and synthesis of a new sorbent material to remove PFAS from various water matrices. In this project, you will synthesis a novel material using cheap, safe and commercially available reagents before testing this material and benchmarking against our current material and competitors.

Initially, the reaction conditions for the synthesis will be optimised before then testing a series of different reagents to try and enhance material performance. Finally, the materials will be tested in different water matrices to evaluate how the water matrix impacts PFAS removal and study if different PFAS are better removed than others to assess selectivity between PFAS.

This project is a material synthesis project hence you will mainly be based in the lab conducting experiments working as a valued member of the product development team. Material characterisation will be carried out in the lab and data collected will be interpreted to identify trends in performance and elucidate structure-property-performance relationships. Given that the product development team work very closely with engineering department you will be exposed to all aspects of material testing and gain insight into the work undertaken to get a material ready to go to market.

What you’ll need to be successful...

Required skills/abilities

Degree background in Chemistry or related discipline (penultimate/finalists/recent graduates)

Familiar with working in a laboratory environment, with attention to good laboratory practices and high standard of health and safety

An analytical mindset (e.g. ability to interpret data and draw conclusions)

Good technical communication skills (verbal and written)

Preferred skills/abilities

Understanding and some experience in organic chemistry and materials synthesis

Some knowledge around PFAS and current technologies used to remove them from water

Experience writing COSHH forms and risk assessments.

Good project management skills

Able to multi-task and adapt efficiently.

About Puraffinity

We are an energetic, customer-driven advanced materials science company focused on designing, developing, and manufacturing smart engineered adsorbent to capture and retain PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) from water across the Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Municipal market sectors.

Based in London – UK, Puraffinity was founded in 2015 and since then has become a leading organisation in tackling PFAS, commonly known as The Forever Chemicals, due to its resistance and high mobility.

Our Vision is to provide 1 billion people with PFAS safe water by 2030, and our Mission is to protect environmental and human health by engineering precision materials to capture chemicals in water.

Puraffinity embraces diversity and fosters a collaborative and teamworking environment, and we dedicate 100% of our time to create a purposeful and sustainable environmental impact.

Our Core Values: Collaboration & team first, Adaptability, Take initiative and Empathy

Why choose Puraffinity

Experience working in an active industrial research lab contributing to cutting edge research solving an emerging environmental issue.

Experience working with and interpreting scientific data, which will help develop an analytical mindset.

Build on communication skills as the intern will be presenting data to the wider team and be responsible for writing reports.

Exposure to many different teams within the organisation such as the engineering team, operations team and senior leaders within the company such as the CEO

An insight into what working in industry is like which will provide vital context when it comes to graduating and entering the workplace.

Career advice from scientists and engineers who have experience in both academia and industry who can offer guidance on the next steps of their career.