My Experience as an UpReach Summer Intern

I’m Lexi and I’m an upReach Summer Intern within the International Hydrogen (HInt) team in the Hydrogen and Industrial Carbon Capture (HICC) Directorate. I’m currently studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Sheffield and I’ll be going into my 4th year of study.

UpReach is a social mobility charity that provides undergraduates with 1-to-1 career advice, exclusive opportunities, and application/interview support to help more students from low socioeconomic backgrounds secure work post graduation.

I’ve been an UpReach associate for three years now, and they’ve helped me a lot with overcoming barriers that I’ve faced. The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) partnered with UpReach to provide exclusive internships over the summer and when I saw the posting for my current role in hydrogen, I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about green energy and the public sector.

One of my first roles was to start updating the international hydrogen country fiches. This not only gave me the opportunity to learn about hydrogen production, demand, storage, and different policies but also how to synthesise the information and pull out the important parts to add to the fiches.

I also contributed to the international forward look (which consisted of timelines for key countries and milestones up until 2040), a brief for an international conference, and producing country comparison graphs showing how the UK compares to other countries. Through the work that I’ve done with the team, I’ve developed my ability to see the bigger picture and how our team fits into the directorate/hydrogen space, as well as further develop my communication skills and ability to display data/information in a clear way.

A highlight of my internship would be the team away day that we had at Cranfield University where we heard from academics about their work on hydrogen and we got to see planes that are being retrofitted to host hydrogen fuel cell propulsion technology!

It’s also been great to get involved with the social mobility network, as they organised mock interviews for the interns so that we can practice answering Civil Service behaviours and strength questions. This internship has really improved my confidence and provided me with experiences and opportunities that I can go forward with and use as examples in interviews.

I’ll be really sad to leave at the end of my internship as I’ve really enjoyed my time in the department, and I’m really grateful to my team and directorate for the support they’ve given me over the summer – everyone has been super lovely and welcoming.

I would have never considered a future in the Civil Service before this internship but I’m now considering applying for the science and engineering fast stream so I can explore engineering roles within the Civil Service. I’ve also especially enjoyed the international aspect of the work that I’ve been doing so that’s also something to think about post graduation! Maybe I’ll combine both hydrogen and aerospace engineering and make hydrogen planes…!