Internship: R&D Surface Chemistry & Coating Technology

Lipocoat Group; Enschede; On-site; EUR 6,700 - 10,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Internship allowance

Travel reimbursement

Real project impact

Lab access

Small international team

Daily supervision

Lunch together

Job summary

LipoCoat BV in Enschede, the Netherlands, offers an internship where you design and run your own experiments in a regulated ISO 13485 lab, working on lipid coating formulations and surface analysis.

You will map process windows, characterise coated surfaces, perform anti-fouling or bacterial studies, and contribute to product development alongside a small, international team.

You will be mentored daily by a scientist and may defend your thesis or internship report at the end of placement.

Qualifications

• Fluent English is required for collaboration and reporting.
• Hands-on lab affinity and comfort in a lab setting.
• Ability to document clearly in a regulated ISO 13485 environment.
• Enrolled in a university program for the full duration of the internship.

Responsibilities

• Design, plan and carry out experiments in our Enschede lab.
• Analyze data and document results according to quality standards.
• Join weekly R&D meetings and present progress.
• Write a thesis or internship report and defend results at end of placement.

Skills

Fluent English

Lab affinity

Attention to detail

Regulated environment

Education

BSc or MSc programme

Job description

LipoCoat develops bio-inspired coatings that make medical devices safer and more comfortable. Our patented, PFAS-free lipid coating is only a few nanometres thin, mimics the natural cell membrane, and prevents proteins and bacteria from sticking to surfaces such as contact lenses, catheters and implants. We are a University of Twente spin-off based at Kennispark in Enschede, we work under an ISO 13485 quality system, and we partner with medical device manufacturers worldwide.

Your internship

As an intern at LipoCoat you do not make coffee and copy files — you get your own project, your own lab bench and a supervisor who takes your work seriously. Depending on your background and interests, your project sits somewhere in coating formulation, surface characterisation, microbiology or process development. Your results feed directly into our development programmes and, in many cases, into the products of our customers.

• Optimising a lipid coating formulation for a new substrate material and mapping the process window.
• Characterising coated surfaces using contact angle measurement, QCM-D, ellipsometry, fluorescence microscopy or XPS.
• Setting up and running anti-fouling, protein adsorption or bacterial adhesion assays.
• Testing coating durability and stability under simulated use and sterilisation conditions.
• Supporting the scale-up of a coating process from lab scale towards production.

What we offer

• A market-conform internship allowance, plus reimbursement of travel expenses.
• A real project with real impact — your work contributes to medical devices that reach patients.
• Daily supervision by an experienced scientist and short lines to the whole company.
• Access to a well-equipped lab and to our characterisation and testing facilities.
• A small, informal and international team, a flat structure, and lunch together every day.
• A serious look at a graduate position for interns who thrive with us.

Your role

• Design, plan and carry out your own experiments in our lab in Enschede.
• Analyse and interpret your data, and document everything according to our quality standards.
• Join the weekly R&D meeting and present your progress to the team.
• Write a thesis or internship report and defend your results at the end of your placement.

This suits you

• You are enrolled in a BSc or MSc programme in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, (Bio)Nanotechnology, Applied Physics, Life Sciences or a comparable field.
• You are available for a full-time internship of at least three months; a graduation project of six to nine months is very welcome.
• You have hands‑on lab affinity and you enjoy figuring things out when an experiment does not go as planned.
• You work precisely, document carefully and are comfortable in a regulated (ISO 13485) environment.
• You communicate fluently in English; Dutch is a plus but not required.
• You are enrolled at a university or university of applied sciences for the full duration of the internship.

Why LipoCoat

We spun out of the University of Twente in 2016 with a single idea. Now our headquarters and labs sit on the same innovation campus in Enschede, the Netherlands, where we innovate novel medical device coatings We are a team of scientists and engineers small enough that everyone knows what everyone else is working on, and ambitious enough to take a university invention all the way into products used on patients. The structure is flat, decisions are made quickly, and the working language is English.