Alexandra tries her hand at being a researcher - and wants to continue

”I love it! I've been given a very central role in the project and have been able to come up with ideas and plan the experiments myself" she says.

Alexandra Aveling has always enjoyed being creative, drawing, painting and sewing. When she was a child, her parents wanted her to try out many different sports and other activities and used to take her to the Teknikens hus in Luleå. Perhaps that's where her interest in science began.

”When I think back to my room, I had little chemistry experiments all over the place, which wasn't always popular when they started to get mouldy. I mixed all sorts of things, thought it was fun to use citric acid and bicarbonate so you could see chemical reactions, and tried making my own slime from starch.”

Professor's visit made an impact

She also liked maths at school and chose a science programme at secondary school.

”A really important thing happened there. We had a visit from Professor Fredrik Almqvist who talked about his research in chemistry and I was absolutely fascinated. I think I had this idea that scientists were very special and eccentric people, and it was hard to imagine that they were just ordinary people. In addition to his research, he told me about the education in life science and that stuck with me.”

After high school, she wanted to work for a while and had a few years to try out a range of different jobs, from pastry chef to shop assistant and process operator at Boliden Rönnskär's smelting plant. Before starting the Bachelor's programme in Life Science, she took three semesters of Spanish at university.

What was it like to start studying Life Science?

”Oh, it was so nervous at first, but great fun. It was kind of the first time I got to do real lab work! When we did experiments, they were put into a bigger context, you understood why you were doing them and what you could use the information for. In high school, it mostly felt like you were testing methods for having done them and it was hard to feel the benefit of that.”

Laboratory work on your own

In the programme, Alexandra also had to work more on her own in the lab and it was important to feel that she could do it, she says. The students had good help from doctoral students as teaching assistants and it also gave them a chance to get to know them and gain insight into what doctoral studies involve.

Alexandra's studies coincided with the corona pandemic. This meant a lot of lectures via Zoom, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. Eventually, students got to be on campus for lab sessions, they simply took turns being in the lab.

Which course(s) did you find most interesting?

”My favorite course was analytical chemistry, which we took in our third year. So many things clicked for me then, previously some of the stuff had felt a bit vague, but now I understood better how everything could be used in real life.”

Self-generating biochar

When it came time to do her bachelor’s exam thesis, Alexandra got to do it in environmental chemist Stina Jansson's research group. Her task was to evaluate a model for assessing biochar's ability to purify water.

The project soon had an exciting continuation. Alexandra had planned to study for a master's degree in chemistry, but before the semester started, a one-year position as a project assistant was offered, in the same research group. She applied and got the job.

”It's also about biochar, so I was lucky enough to have experience of that from the exam project.”

The project is about a "self-generating" biochar discovered by researchers at Umeå University. It is formed as a by-product when other biochar is produced and Alexandra is now investigating its properties.

”There is a lot of potential in different biochar” she says.” Often they are made from waste and residues such as sewage sludge. They can be used, for example, to clean water from pharmaceutical residues, in advanced materials or as nutrients in soil.”

'It's exciting to really dig into a subject,' says Alexandra. As well as reading up on current research, she gets to plan and carry out experiments and has just started to get results to analyse.

”Right now, a year seems like a very short time!”

When the year is up, she'll be studying for her planned master's degree in chemistry. This is needed so that she can become a doctoral student in the next stage. Because by now, Alexandra is sure she wants to continue working in research.

And after your PhD, what is your dream to keep doing?

”For me, the most important thing is that what I am doing benefits society, and I am thinking of environmental chemistry.”

We know that many young people hesitate to study chemistry at university. Why do you think that is? And what would you say to someone considering a bachelor's degree in Life Science?

”What made me hesitate was that I thought you have to be some kind of super-smart superhuman to do chemistry. The threshold felt high, maybe because you don't think of it as a normal profession. But, now I've seen that it's a wonderfully varied job and that very ordinary people do it.”

”The training is varied, there is a lot of lab work, but also theory. The big advantage of Life Science is that the education is broad, we have molecular biology as well, so you don't have to feel that you're going to get bogged down in something very narrow, but the programme provides a good foundation for many different professions.”

Read more about the Bachelor's programme in Life Science