Sandy Gordon

Job title:

Fire and Explosion Suppression Research Chemist for Kidde plc.

What degree did you study?

MSc Chemistry from the University of Nottingham.

What are your main duties of work?

Developing and testing new fire and explosion suppression agents (e.g. water additives, foams, powders and gaseous agents) for use in all aspects of fire fighting. This includes hand held fire extinguishers, professional fire fighting equipment and full-scale industrial aerospace and military systems. The research department also serves as a problem solving centre for production issues in the operating companies.

What are your favourite aspects of the job?

My favourite part of the job is assessing new large scale systems on the firing range, although it can be cold and wet sometimes. New suppression systems have to be tested against a set of standard events, such as different types of fires or explosions that can be quite large scale.

What kind of salary can a graduate expect to earn in this job?

£19,000 potentially rising to £28,000 over five years.

How has your degree helped you?

To do this job it was essential to have a good understanding of chemistry. A wide variety of chemicals are involved in fire fighting; these include water additives such as simple salts, fluorinated compounds in foams, dry powders and less reactive gases. All these chemicals have very different properties and are analysed in different ways. Therefore a degree in chemistry is required to understand how they behave and to develop new chemicals that are even more effective at extinguishing fires.