Undergraduates present their research in Westminster

Friday, 27 February 2015

Laura Armstrong (English Language) and John Redwood MP

Two Reading students were amongst fifty undergraduates from across the UK who presented the outcome of their research projects to MPs at ‘Posters in Parliament' in Westminster earlier in the month.

Laura Armstrong (English Language) and Thom Rawson (Mathematics) took part in the summer 2014 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP). They were chosen as overall winners at the Undergraduate Research Poster Showcase event in November by Alex Saxon, Director of Strategy at RCUK, with participation in Posters in Parliament as part of their prize.

Laura's project, supervised by Dr Christiana Themistocleous, examined attitudes to old and new myths to multilingualism in Reading through collating and examining the views of 200 residents.

Thom's work, jointly supervised by Dr Danica Greetham (Maths) and Dr Tijana Blanusa (Biological Sciences) brought a mathematical approach to optimising garden space, specifically optimising the ‘ecosystem services' of plant combinations used on green roofs.

Both Laura and Thom had lively discussions with their fellow undergraduate researchers from other universities and with Wokingham MP John Redwood.

A growing number of universities are engaging their undergraduates in research. Reading remains at the forefront with 2015 marking ten years of UROP.

To find out more about the UROP programme see www.reading.ac.uk/reading