IChemE welcomes student visitors from India

IChemE welcomed Amritasree Pradeep Menon, Sauradeep Majumdar and Monojit Chowdhury to the UK in November 2015. The three students were elected as winners to take part in the visit based on applications received by the IIChE judging panel and overall proved a success academically, outstanding achievements out with their studies and recommendations from their lecturers and peers.

During the visit, the students experienced three industrial visits to Mondelez’s global centre of excellence for chocolate research and development in Birmingham, Essar oil’s refinery in Ellesmere Port, and Cemex cement works in Rugby. Links to India were evident at both Mondelez and Essar as web conferencing facilitated meetings with their offices in India. Exposure to these companies highlighted the breadth of opportunities available to the students upon graduation. The University of Birmingham hosted the students on tours of their reaction engineering, food and fuel cell facilities at their Centre for formulation engineering facilities. Some of the research and technology being advanced at Birmingham university is relevant to some of the challenges faced in India where bio-fuel is a major growth industry helping combat pollution and reliance on diminishing resources derived from limited oil production.

It was a pleasure to host our visitors at IChemE’s Global Awards which received over 500 award entries from 40 countries and 5 continents. Sharing a table with two award winners and networking with senior industry professionals and IChemE members added further value to a strong programme. Neil Atkinson, IChemE's Director of qualifications and international development stated,“Today’s young chemical engineers need to understand the global nature of the process industries. Employers will want their new recruits to appreciate the challenges of working for diverse, multi-site companies and the eight students on this exchange programme will get a direct chance to experience this.”

IChemE would like to express their thanks for those supporting this visit:

• Joe Wood CEng MIChemE Professor - University of Birmingham
• Emma McLeod CEng FIChemE, Principal Engineer (Process technologies) - Mondelez
• Richard Holden CEng MIChem,E Process technology team leader - Essar Oil
• Brian Southam IEng MIChemE Cement Maintenance Director (Northern Europe) and Ian Southcott UK Community Affairs Manager - CEMEX

Winning students (Left to right): Sauradeep Majumdar (Jadavpur University, Kolkata), Amritasree Pradeep Menon, (Amrita University, Coimbatore) Monojit Chowdhury (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) History of this programme and previous winners can be viewed here (2010 article).

The three students also presented on topics of their interest which had to relate to IChemE's Chemical Engineering Matters report.

To find out more about their thoughts on the visit and to download their presentations, please click here.