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This summer, we ran, for a second year, the scheme of two-month-long summer research placements in DIS offered to our 3rd-year undergraduate students.
The aim of the scheme is threefold: (a) provide undergraduates with experience and skills from working on a DIS research project; (b) raise awareness of the DIS programme amongst our undergraduate students; and (c) give more opportunities and enhance the career prospects of students from under-represented groups. The application process gave the opportunity for students to identify themselves as coming from an under-represented group, one of the selection criteria was “how much the student will benefit from such an opportunity”, and two of the six bursaries (funded by the STFC Impact Acceleration Account) were ring-fenced from the start for students from under-represented groups. The scheme provided extremely popular, with approximately 25% of the third-year undergraduate students applying for it.
In the end, thanks to funding from the Royal Society, we were able to fund eight bursaries, with four students being from under-represented groups in STEM/DIS. Three of the eight projects were supervised by our industry partners, and the rest were projects in STFC science. We have asked all students to prepare a short layperson summary outlining the outcome of their experience and are currently collecting feedback about their experience.
