Our News
Summer Placement Information Seminar
On Tuesday 1st of November, the Biochemistry & Biotechnology society held a summer placement information seminar.
Current fourth year biochemistry students delivered very informative presentations covering; the application process, funding, placement role and completion of the work placement module BC4021. Fergal Cremin, Tymoteusz Kaminski and Matthew Quill were recipients of the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology Summer Bursary Studentship. Jennifer McCarthy and Ria Walsh completed an industrial placement.
Fergal completed a project entitled “Investigation into the Effect of the L452R Mutation in the SARS-COVID-2 Spike Protein on Spike Protein Cleavage” under the supervision of Professor Justin McCarthy and postgraduate student James Harte.
Tymoteusz worked under the supervision of Dr Eoin Fleming and the aim of his research project was to test whether trastuzumab, an anti-cancer therapeutic agent that binds to the Her2 receptor, would bind to a truncated form of the Her2 receptor.
Matthew was co-supervised by Professor Cora O’Neill and Dr Kellie Dean. The primary goal of his project was to investigate the effects of serum deprivation on the expression of Smaug protein in mammalian cells.
Jennifer McCarthy completed a summer internship at Janssen Ringaskiddy as a Biologics Clinical Planning & Operations (BCPO) co-op student. The BCPO team form part of the Strategic Sciences and Technical Operations (SS&TO) organisation within Janssen R&D. Jennifer carried out a number of projects that delved into the areas of materials visibility, planning, strategy, and operations. Jennifer co-established the first BCPO Newsletter with fellow co-ops, which highlighted the achievements of each BCPO Team across the Janssen network. Jennifer attained a Lean Yellow Belt Certification.
Ria Walsh carried out a 12 weeks of placement at BioAtlantis in Tralee. BioAtlantis focuses on ‘Nature working naturally’ and extract natural compounds from resources like seaweed. Ria’s work was in quality assurance. She was involved in testing intermediate and finished product samples, logging results and reporting any unusual results to the head Microbiologist.
All the students outlined how hugely beneficial and enjoyable they found their placement and they also used their placement to complete the elective Biochemistry placement module BC4021.
Dr Sinéad Kerins closed the seminar by thanking all the speakers for their excellent presentations and thanking Brendan O’Flynn, Chair of the UCC Biochemistry and Biotechnology society for chairing the seminar.