Irin - Grow with your chances

Grow with your chances

I am Irin, a chemical engineer who recently graduated from M.Sc. in Chemical and Energy Engineering program at the university of Magdeburg. I am 26 years old and come from Kerala, India. I would like to share my experiences at Evonik in Marl, Germany, where I did an internship followed by my master’s thesis.

After completing my bachelor studies in chemical engineering in India, I came to Germany for my master studies. Germany is known for its chemical industry, including Evonik as a leading specialty chemicals company. During my masters, I applied for an internship position at Evonik and after two rounds of personal interviews, I got selected as an intern. Because of the good reputation Evonik has in the chemical market, there was never a doubt that this company could use and develop my skills and hard work into something special. Evonik, with its global outlook is indeed several steps ahead of its peers in being inclusive to international employees. Working in an Evonik plant at Germany, I received an excellent blend of German as well as international exposure. 

During my two months internship at Evonik, I was privileged to work in an European Union funded project called MACBETH (Membranes And Catalysts Beyond Economic and Technological Hurdles). As a passionate chemical engineer, this experience introduced me to a new dimension of knowledge and learning. The tasks I was assigned to was very challenging as well as exciting. Also, since the project included collaborators from various institutes within EU, I was lucky to interact with them and gain good exposure.

Since the internship started after the COVID-19 restrictions came in place, in-person meetings were not possible. However, with the tools provided to us, online meetings were running smoothly, thus not making us feel the lack of in-person meetings.

After the internship, I was given a thesis offer from Evonik with an objective to extend the work done in the internship. In this work we aimed to model a catalytic membrane reactor for hydroformylation. This was done under the guidance of my professors from OVGU Magdeburg and Evonik respectively. This further gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into cutting-edge chemical reaction engineering research. This experience helped me to broaden my knowledge in the fields of catalytic membrane reactors.

Most people might be unaware of the fact that the things which we are using daily are the results of various chemical processes, especially hydroformylation. Like most chemical engineers, even I strongly believe that it is an area that requires continuous modification to achieve energy efficiency. This motivated me to contribute to this field during my internship and thesis days.

One of the privileges that I dearly cherished at Evonik was the presence of colleagues who are experts in their respective fields. This helped me to easily clear my doubts and progress in my work smoothly.

Working at Evonik was a great experience and I am grateful for the opportunity. Evonik has beautifully molded the Chemical Engineer in me. I am glad to say that I am continuing my research work on the same field as a doctoral researcher at Evonik. Now I am looking forward to contributing my maximum in the field of hydroformylation as well as catalytic membrane reactors for a better tomorrow.

Thank you.

 yours Irin

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On the students@Evonik blog, students, who work at Evonik, share their experiences about life and work in the company.

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#Chemistry #Students@Evonik #internship