Report on the 2012 URIP Scheme
Seventeen winners were selected for the 2012 URIP awards out of more than 100 high quality applications from undergraduates in Arts, Science, Divinity and Medicine. The students were selected on their academic record and on the quality of their research project, which they designed in consultation with their academic mentor. Research topics ranged across all disciplines and included a study of the St Andrews maces, orientalism in Middle English literature, advanced Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling methods for microlensing lightcurves and positioning "community" in sustainable development policy (see full list of participants and projects).
URIP Poster event at Parliament Hall
All of the URIP winners along with a further 12 students who had won awards from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Carnegie Trust for Scotland, the Wellcome Trust and the British Psychological Society were invited to present the results of their project at an event held in Parliament Hall that was attended by the academic supervisors, the Deans and Pro Deans, members of the Principal's Office, Heads of School and Directors of Teaching. The students presented posters and were on hand to answer questions and to explain their work to the visitors.
Holders of URIP awards at the autumn poster event at Parliament Hall
The £250 prize for the winning poster went to Natasha Latysheva for her poster entitled 'Transcription factor binding-site prediction: computationally combining evolutionary genomics, epigenetic modifications and sequence data to discover p53 binding sites in the human genome'. Natasha carried out her research in the School of Biology under the supervision of Dr Daniel Barker.
Runners-up prizes were awarded to Maximilian Schultz(left) for 'Cold atom realisations of topological insulators' which was supervised by Dr Chris Hooley in the School of Physics and Astronomy, and Jonathan Harwell, who also worked in the School of Physics and Astronomy on 'Optical muscle contraction sensor', supervised by Professor Ifor Samuel.