Undergraduates present their research at Westminster
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Francesca (above) and Hamza (below) presenting their research.
Two Reading students presented the outcome of their research projects to MPs at ‘Posters in Parliament' in Westminster during March.
The annual exhibition, hosted by University College London, showcases some of the best UG research in the country and saw 52 students from 27 universities display their research to a range of MPs and higher education policymakers.
Francesca McPeanne (Education) and Hamza Abu-Elmagd (Pharmacy) took part in the summer 2016 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP). They were chosen as overall winners at the Undergraduate Research showcase event in November by Marcy Travers, Senior Policy Manager for Consultations and Inquiries at Research Councils UK, with participation in Posters in Parliament as part of their prize.
Francesca's project, supervised by Dr Holly Joseph, explored the controversial 'bilingual advantage' in word learning to examine whether children who speak English as an additional language learn new words they encounter during reading better than their monolingual peers.
Hamza's work, supervised by Professor Kath Ryan, Dr Nilesh Patel and Dr Wing Man Lau focused on evaluating stakeholder experiences of pharmacists in General Practice clinics. His poster was one of eleven research projects to be shortlisted for the overall Posters in Parliament competition on the day and was awarded joint third prize by the judging panel, which was made up of leaders in the higher education and research sectors.
Both Francesca and Hamza had lively discussions with their fellow undergraduate researchers from other universities and with academics from across the country.
A growing number of universities are engaging their undergraduates in research. Reading remains at the forefront with 2016/7 being another record breaking year for the number of UROP applications received and the number of projects being funded across the university.
These UROP projects will be advertised to students until Friday 31 March on the UROP website.