{"id":2157,"date":"2017-06-26T14:44:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T14:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=2157"},"modified":"2022-04-13T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:14:23","slug":"suzanne-gregson-mchem-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2017\/06\/26\/suzanne-gregson-mchem-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Suzanne Gregson (MChem 2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">Suzanne Gregson <span style=\"color: #ff0000\">(MChem 2004) <span style=\"color: #000000\">is a s<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">enior patent examiner at the Intellectual Property Office. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;d heard great things from people who studied at Cardiff, and had a good feeling when I visited.<\/strong> If I had to sum the University up in five words, they would be: excellent teaching, supportive, fun and Welsh!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cardiff provided the perfect balance between an excellent degree course and great fun. <\/strong>The support I received from my lecturers throughout my\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cardiff.ac.uk\/chemistry\">chemistry\u00a0degree <\/a>was invaluable, as were the analytical skills that I developed. Equally, don&#8217;t forget to have lots of fun. These will be some of the best, most carefree years of your life, and you won&#8217;t be able to get away with it when you&#8217;re older!<\/p>\n<p><strong>My favourite memories are nights out in the union and meeting lifelong friends<\/strong>. I was obviously well-rested, alert and punctual for every single lecture and lab practical so that I could enjoy them fully. Oh, and of course the moment I found out I&#8217;d been awarded a first in my degree!<\/p>\n<p><strong>You might find your dream job straight away, or it might take some time. <\/strong>I worked for the Welsh Government and a pharmaceutical company, before starting at the IPO in 2008. Before you apply, seek out opportunities to shadow people who currently work in the type of role you want; in my experience, people are more than happy to take the time to talk to those who are interested in their work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;m now a Senior Patent Examiner at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO).<\/strong> Patent examiners search through patent databases and other literature to establish whether an invention is new, and examine applications to ensure they meet legal requirements. I also visit patent attorneys and patent applicants as part of our stakeholder engagement work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Since working at the IPO<\/strong>, I have worked on domestic and international copyright policy (including negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva), and completed the National Experts in Professional Training Programme, which involved a 5-month secondment to the European Commission in Brussels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You have so many amazing opportunities ahead of you<\/strong>. The degree you&#8217;re awarded at the end of those (short!) three, four or five years at university is going to follow you around for a little while yet. A good degree from a good university can make all the difference, so make it count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If I had to sum the University up in five words, they would be: excellent teaching, supportive, fun and Welsh!","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":2160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chemistry","category-our-alumni"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1080"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions\/2163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}