Inés Obregón, Mikel Imizcoz, Soledad González and Beñat Lorea, 3rd and 4th year students of Chemistry, have carried out international internships during the summer, with grants from the Erasmus + and Science Internship Program (SIP) -the latter, financial aid of School of Sciences- in the framework of the collaborations that the professors of the center maintain with other European researchers.

According to Inés - a recent graduate of Chemistry, a student of the double Degree at Chemistry + Biochemistry - her work at the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich consisted of studying the interaction between macromolecules (both synthetic and biological) with different chromophores, with the goal aim of searching for new tools for image diagnosis using the optoacoustic spectroscopy technique. 

Mikel Imízcoz -graduate recently at Chemistry- collaborated in a research at the School of Pharmacy of Queen's University Belfast to obtain lignin-based hydrogels used in the development of microneedle drug delivery systems. Supervised by Eneko Larrañeta (Chemistry 2008 and PhD 2012) -who now works as a professor at the Northern Irish university- his partnership added the "plus" of introducing new materials and the valorization of a residual material with certain antimicrobial properties. 

Real experience with research teams from other countries.

In the case of Soledad and Beñat (both 3rd year students of Chemistry), the internship took place at the Pharmaceutical Biophysics Group, King's College London, supported by Professor Cecile Dreiss. There Soledad worked on a project to study the rheological properties of surfactants and their interactions with antiepileptic drugs, and on the study of supramolecular associations with various excipients using NMR and electronic spectroscopy techniques.

Beñat, on the other hand, performed the physicochemical characterization of a family of selenium-based organic compounds, which he had previously synthesized at the department of Chemistry Orgánica of the University of Navarra.