9 Oct 2017
For over thirty years, SCI has supported and recognised the excellence of early career people by aiding their studies in the form of an SCI Scholarship.
Since 1985 around 71 scholarships have been awarded which have not only given the recipients financial assistance, but have enabled them to broaden their network, and strengthen their skills and knowledge. SCI Scholars receive access to publishing and mentoring opportunities and are given a platform to present their work amongst esteemed scientists and industrialists, thus raising their profile within the scientific community.
In the past nine years alone, SCI has generously bequeathed over £115,000 of its charitable funds to SCI Scholars and the scientists of the future.
Isobel Mackey was awarded an SCI Scholarship in 2016. Here, she tells us about herself and her research project.
‘Over the past year I have had several exciting achievements in my PhD. In December, for the first time, I gave a presentation at a conference - the IOM3’s “Emerging Trends in Minerals Engineering”. I have also had two abstracts accepted for “Flotation ’17”, a conference to be held in Cape Town in November this year. One of these pieces of work is the results from a set of experiments I obtained during a two month collaboration project at Pontifica Universidad de Catolica in Santiago de Chile. This was an absolutely fantastic opportunity where I was able to use the expertise and equipment at one of Chile’s top universities and make some interesting advancements in my field of study. Whilst I was there I had the exciting opportunity to visit several mine operation sites, a key area of interest from my thesis, yet one I had not been able to experience first-hand before. I also saw significant improvement in my Español! This trip would not have been possible without the help of the SCI Scholarship and the collaboration still continues with further work between the two institutions in the pipeline, and a good journal paper being shaped from the results so far.
'I was fortunate to be able to attend the college of scholars day in November last year which was a fantastic opportunity to meet the other scholars as well as previous scholars and members of industry. It was a really useful event to find out more about the SCI, Alan Baylis’ talk about the essentials of networking was especially useful as this is something I have had very little exposure to so far. I was able to put these techniques into practice during my trip to Chile. Over the next 12 months I am looking forward to presenting my work at the conference in Cape Town as well as continuing with my experiments and writing further journal articles. I am also keen to attend more SCI events, especially the public lectures held by the London group. I would like to thank the SCI for this scholarship and look forward to the further opportunities that I will gain from this.’
Isobel Mackey
PhD Student
Imperial College London
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