Visit to CPI

A few weeks after talking to George Ewart as mentioned in my last post, he contacted me to say that he had been at lunch with an old friend who was a non executive member on a board of a company called CPI (Centre for Process & Innovation). At this lunch he mentioned the talk that he and I had and his friend offered to take us both on a tour of CPI, to show us around the centre's facilities and meet some of the members of staff. Of course, this was fantastic news as this could be a great example of a place that I could see myself working at in the future, and it would give me an opportunity to understand more of the business and see how it drives scientific processes in the real world. 

I got in touch with Sandy Anderson, the non exec board member, who was kind enough to arrange a full day's programme for George and I, as he had not seen the centre before either.  

I decided to do some background research on the centre before I went, to understand more about what I would see. CPI employs just under 400 people, and are based in the North East of England, with their main site being in Wilton. They were set up by ONE North East, and their current CEO was Nigel Perry. They particularly specialise in working with other firms and companies to develop commercial products, medicines/biological testing and technologies. I also researched around a few of the people I knew I would be meeting, such as Sandy Anderson OBE who was actually a governor at my school for almost a decade, and stopped when I was in year 8, in 2012. Alongside his current position in CPI, he has also been the chair and pro chancellor of Teeside University as well as chair of various other companies including senior vice president at ICI. Dr. Lucy Foley, the head of Biologics centre in Darlington (which I would be visiting later) who studied chemical engineering at UCL, and went on to become a teaching Fellow at Newcastle University, and Dr. Tony Jackson who had previously worked at ICI, and will have no doubt shared connections with George. He then worked under AzkoNobel for 6 years, being project director and research team leader before coming to CPI and being their head of Research at the Formulations Centre, which George and I would also be visiting later in the day. CPI had recently gained £15 million of funding from a scientific council for future formulation projects, set up two new buildings in the NETPark in Sedgefield, including a graphene research centre- something which my chemistry teacher would absolutely love to see. 

On 19th of May, I caught the train to Darlington and was picked up by George as we made our way to the Biologics centre to meet Dr. Lucy Foley. I had not realised that this centre was so brand new! Everything was beautifully designed in this centre, with some very cool panoramic views around the main conference rooms of the labs. We were given a full floor-to-floor tour of the place, from the liquid nitrogen tanks outside to the heart of the machinery and computer modelling rooms. They even had a feature that allowed an iPad to be pointed towards any wall and show-in real time- the pipes behind the walls or ceilings to ease the problem of fixing pipes or doing maintainence accurately and efficiently. We had a talk with Dr Foley in which she explained all of what goes on in this centre, and showed us particularly her area of expertise, fermentation. They had around 50 small (maybe 500ml?) fermentation reaction vessels in one room which were being constantly measured and had different amounts of reactants in them, all hooked up to a self producing graph to find the optimal mixture of ingredients and conditions so that they could then scale up to the 10 or even 100 litre vessels in order to mass produce the product. In the one and a half hours we had there, I was very impressed by the whole place and asked Dr. Foley if they would be interested in linking with my school, for the possibility of a school trip or maybe for a lecture to one of our science societies as we have such a variety of good chemists and biologists at Durham school, to which she said she would put me in touch with their STEM co-ordinater to arrange this. She also offered me a week's work experience at CPI during the summer which I happily accepted! 

The next place we went was CPI Wilton; where the company was based. Upon arrival we had lunch with the CEO, Nigel Perry. He really helped me to understand the business side of what CPI do, and explained in more detail the projects that were taking place all around the area. The lead scientist there also showed us around the labs that they had, with all sorts of amazing equipment. Some of the coolest things I remember were polypeptide sorting machines, they would be moved parallel across a membrane with specific conditions on either side to facilitate the movement of certain proteins and not others. By passing them parallel to the membrane you do not change their structure by force and by altering the conditions (for things like specific amino acid charges and polymer shape) you can vary the range of polypeptides which cross, selecting them, in effect. I also remember a fluid which the polypeptides would travel at different speeds through and this was hooked to a computer which would be able to identify the identities of the proteins collected. 

The final place we went on our tour of CPI (which was turning into a tour of the north east of England!) was over in Sedgefield, at the "NETPark" where I met Dr. Tony Jackson and had a look into some printable electronics and Graphene research they were doing in their brand new centre. He explained how they were revolutionising the precision with which they could print and even said they could now print at an atomic level, around (1x10⁻⁹ metres) and showed us some incredible examples of technology which had been printed and woven into clothing and touch pads which were printed into a seemingly solid table surface which were unbelievably sensitive and gave a beautiful image on a computer screen. The graphene was interesting especially to talk about because it was a section of the GCSE chemistry course and we had to learn about it as a giant covalent structure. One thing he did mention was graphene's possible asbestos-like properties, as far as being unreactive enough to slice DNA apart and cause mutations, and so as a safety precaution until more is known it unfortunately has to be kept behind glass or in containers! He also talked to me a lot about his particular route through Both CPI and AzkoNobel and his experiences of leadership in interesting foreign countries including Germany and China as well as how his family life had affected his career path and his need to balance the two. This gave a deeper understanding for my future and will be something I am sure I will need to take into account at some point.

I loved the day I had at CPI, and I hope to do many more similar things to it in the future. I am so thankful to George for introducing me, and then to the whole of the staff who showed us around at CPI and for organising such an opportunity for me. Defintiely somewhere I could see myself working in the future... 

EDIT: Work experience commences in the 1st wee
k of August and a school trip will be arranged hopefully in Sep/Oct this year.