Scottish Alliance for Food

Nuffield Research Placements are funded by the Nuffield Foundation and delivered by STEM Learning. Designed to be engaging, hands-on research projects, students can apply skills and knowledge learned at school to work alongside researchers and industry professionals. In turn, the awardees can develop subject understanding, attain research and quantitative skills to expand career prospects and learn more about higher education and different career paths.  

Nicole and Michael spent their two-week placement with SCAF exploring literature to identify the place of interdisciplinary working and cross-institutional and cross-sectoral links in food and nutrition research. Read about their experiences below. 

Nicole Ambrose, St Roch’s Secondary School 

The Nuffield Research placement granted me the opportunity to meet and learn from so many amazing people. The process of applying was in its own way tedious yet educative, however it was a small price to pay for invaluable experience. I came across the Nuffield Research Placement on my hunt for work experience as it's my dream to study medicine. I was given the opportunity to carry out a research project with the SCAF team, based in the New Lister Building, in association with the University of Glasgow.   

My project was to explore ways of visualising cross-sectorial and cross-institutional collaborations between higher education institutions within the Scottish food space. I was to search literature databases, extract publications and find ways to visualise that data. At first, I had absolutely no idea how to come about doing this. As a secondary school pupil, I had never been asked to use any sort of advanced research databases, so this project and its requirements for success came as a shock to me. Not only was I unfamiliar with how to use these databases, but I was also stumped on how I could possibly visualise such a large mass of publications. However, Laura Haag, Project Manager for SCAF, and Prof Emilie Combet, Professor of Food and Nutrition, offered so much support that every day felt like an opportunity to learn new skills. For example, how to use Microsoft Excel to extract specific information or how to refine search terms on Scopus (a literature database).   

A typical day would involve coming into the office at 9am and immediately tackling the research project. However, on certain days we were given the opportunity to explore other facilities in the New Lister Building. On one of these special days, Micheal, my research partner, and I were given a tour of the labs by one of the PhD students. I was fascinated by the equipment, their uses and the overall protocols within the lab. Seeing all the students with their heads down, completely engrossed in their study inspired me to not only complete my Nuffield assignment but to also aim as high as they have in education.  

 The day that had the most lasting impressions on me was the team lunch, where I presented my research progress to the staff and students within SCAF. At first, it was daunting. I was nervous, anxious and sweaty for the two days leading to my presentation. However, when I got there, I was welcomed with smiling faces, laughs between small conversations and the overpowering smell of different foods. By the end of the lunch, not only was my stomach full and eyes droopy, but I’d had so many meaningful conversations with the other researchers, Masters and PhD students. I got to hear about what projects they were currently doing and this encouraged me to get up and present mine as well, with no sweat or anxiety.   

Overall, my experience with the SCAF team was genuinely worthwhile, and I hope that this entry, proposed by Millie Mather, a lovely member of the SCAF team,  is able to accurately relay the overall experience of being in a new environment, one that was at first scary and later on turned out to be the most memorable experiences I have had as a young person.  

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Michael Enwegbara, Kirkintilloch High School 

I plan to study Dentistry when I leave high school and was looking for experiences that would give me a taste of what the STEM world is like. I got offered the amazing opportunity by Nuffield Research Placements to be an intern with the Scottish Alliance for Food (SCAF) under the mentorship of Professor Emilie Combet and Dr Laura Haag at the New Lister Building, Glasgow.  

The Scottish Alliance for Food is an organisation that hopes to bring together different perspectives from social, natural, formal, and applied sciences, and arts and humanities to understand and address the complexity of food as a research challenge, helping to bridge the gap between food producers, scientists, and the people of Scotland. My partner, Nicole Ambrose and I were carrying out a research project to explore the levels of collaboration between Scottish universities in the food and nutrition space. This involved extraction of publications from research databases and data handling in Excel. I thought Excel was mainly used in the finance sector, but the research placement gave me a new perspective on its other functions.  

During my research placement, I met PhD students at the New Lister Building who were also carrying out different research projects and they gave me an insight on what it was like in their lives. Specifically, I got to meet Abdul who gave us a tour of the labs at the New Lister Building and explained to us the multiple steps he used in gathering data for his research project. I also got to participate in rating abstracts that were going to be shown at the SCAF annual conference.  

Overall, I had an amazing and resourceful time at this placement as it gave me some of the necessary skills I need for the future; It let me experience what I was like to be part of a work team and gave me similar experiences to working a 9-5 job.  

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The SCAF team would like to thank Nicole and Michael for their contributions during their placement and wish them the best of luck for future! 

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First published: 16 August 2024