How a Data Science Placement inspired my career direction

Pete Siharath, BSc Data Science with a Year in Industry graduate (2026)

Like many students, I went to university straight after my A-levels. My motivation for choosing to spend a year in industry was to explore how my data science skills could be applied to real-world problems. I wanted to see what working life would be like, and if it would suit me.

Image: Pete Siharath 

Choosing a placement

Most of the placements I’d seen advertised were in the financial sector. The Assistant Data Scientist position advertised at Malvern Panalytical, a manufacturer and supplier of laboratory analytical instruments, particularly appealed to me as they worked with several different industries including pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and food. The company also had a local office in Bristol.

 Putting lecture courses into practice

In summer 2024, I joined a small team of 20 people, including other placement students from different universities, at Malvern Panalytical. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was made to feel very welcome, and it was rewarding to be able to put my knowledge of Python programming and machine learning algorithms from my degree into use straight away! I also learnt many useful technical skills on-the-job, including writing clean code, using cloud services for models, and gaining experience of data pipelines and neural networks.

Image: My project focused on developing a model to deblur images of particles, a particularly interesting technical challenge as different particles have different amount of blurriness. These images are of magnified hydrocarbon particles, in both blurry and sharp forms, which I used as training data for my model.

  Networking opportunities

In terms of transferable softer skills, I had lots of opportunities for informal networking, with the Bristol team and at the UK headquarters of Malvern Panalytical in Great Malvern. This gave me great practice in explaining my work to both technical and non-technical audiences. At the end of my placement all ten year-in-industry students, from multiple different disciplines, came together to present their work to a large audience from across the company.

 Reflections on spending a year in industry

I returned to my fourth year, refreshed by the break from studying, armed with the knowledge that I would like to work as a data scientist in industry after my degree. I’ve recently finished my exams, and I’ve just started seeking graduate data scientist roles. I’m a lot better at presenting my skills, both on paper and at interview, all due to the year spent with Malvern Panalytical. I’m already getting a lot more responses than when I was applying for placements. It was a really valuable year for me personally, and I would definitely recommend the experience to other students!

 Mutual benefits for students and companies

“Malvern Panalytical has a strong track record of supporting student development through a range of placement opportunities, including year-in-industry roles such as our collaboration with the University of Bristol. As a business spanning both technical and commercial domains, we’re able to offer students genuine insight into working in a highly technical, real-world development environment.

We place significant value on the contributions of year-in-industry students, such as Pete, who deliver meaningful work that supports the development of future products. While students gain a broad range of experiences during their placement, we also learn a great deal from the fresh perspectives they bring. In fast-moving fields such as data science and machine learning, these new approaches are particularly valuable. These mutual benefits have led to a number of students joining the team on a permanent basis after a successful placement, and is a key of source talent recruitment for the company.” Ed Morris, Senior Data Scientist, Malvern Panalytical.

Interview written up by Dr Joanna Jordan https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannafjordan/