Undergraduate Hannah Faulkner recently took part in the Faraday Undergraduate Student Experiences (FUSE) programme. FUSE provides selected students with the opportunity to take an 8-week paid summer internship. The Faraday Institution is the UK’s independent institute for electrochemical energy storage science and technology, supporting research, training, and analysis.
Working alongside a supervisor, students have access to other research scientists and unique facilities as well as the chance to participate in industry-inspired energy storage research activities. At the end of the programme, each intern prepares a poster covering their research project to present at a session of a Faraday Institution community research meeting.
Hannah Faulkner commented:
Completing the FUSE internship gave me an insight into working collaboratively in an area that I am unfamiliar with. Having Engineering and Law work in an interdisciplinary way, meant different perspectives and research methods could be applied. As we were researching non-experimentally, and as a non-STEM student (I study Law), the content of the research was new to both of us.
While I have encountered Intellectual Property before in my studies, to research patent literature in depth was new and very interesting. Despite being a remote internship, I still felt very involved with the NEXTRODE team, having frequent discourse with my supervisor, Dr Denis Cumming, as well as the Faraday Institution. The latter frequently contacted the FUSE intern cohort through masterclasses, cohort calls and intern run calls. All this communication created a working environment, and ensured we were learning from professionals, as well as our peers working on other projects.
I was able to apply skills from my degree through database searching, as well as literature reading and searching. My ability to read articles quickly was very useful given the amount of information we were looking at. As a personal interest, I also looked at cases between car and battery companies which I found fascinating.
The most difficult thing however, was the discovery of patents. As the area we were researching is new, finding the patents proved challenging. This was especially true as we encountered that technical terminology can vary. However, this made finding them even more of an accomplishment. Working together to do this meant we could overcome these difficulties.
This experience from the University and the Faraday Institution will be invaluable for my future aims. This coming semester, I will be completing a law research project, so the research skills and methods gained from this internship will prove very useful. Regarding my long-term plans, I am hoping to do a master’s degree as well, so the 8 weeks of full-time research has given me experience to excel in a research focused degree.
Hannah Faulkner
LLB European and International Law