Natural sciences

I'm Dr Helen Roberts, Director of Programs for the Department of Natural Sciences. Seeing the students progress and graduate and then go on and do amazing things and I've seen students come through and go and work at pharmaceutical companies like Glaxo Smith Cline, some students are going to do PhDs at Cambridge.

I have a student who actually taught on my very first day at Middlesex. She's now working in a really big lab in the States at the NIH and I couldn't be prouder of her. So that's what I love about Middlesex, it really has the students at heart.

The courses that we teach are actually accredited by the leaders in the field and the professional bodies so they can be really confident that what they have learned is going to be really valuable in the workplace.

We've got such great facilities here, such great equipment in the lab, such great technology going from proteomics to mass spectrometry, molecular biology facilities. We have actually a brand new chemistry lab and a new pharmaceutical chemistry computer lab as well for drug modelling and that's really cool.

Compared to other universities, they're really a hidden gem. Seriously, it was truly an unforgettable course. I would redo it a thousand times over, that's how good it was. A lot of our teaching particularly in natural sciences is very, very practical based.

From year one, we are teaching them techniques that they'll be able to use in the lab. Talking about different theories or different scientific concepts, we always relate that back to the real world and I think that really helps the students to understand the relevance of what we're teaching them.

Everyone is very helpful here and they hold me a lot, like with your degree, with your future studies, with anything you need, you always get support and help. My favourite moment of the year is normally graduation.

A lot of our students are the first in their family to come to university. I know that they are doing their family proud as well. I absolutely love it and as you see all these students that come up on the stage and some of them all wave to me, hi wuss, you know, and just seeing them, it's absolutely lovely.

I think our students are fab.