Students compete for a place to present their research to UK Parliament

UCL undergraduates from a wide range of courses including Psychology, Biochemistry, Urban Planning and Economics, and recent graduates, presented their research posters in an exhibition in the UCL Cloisters on Wednesday 30 January.

Celebrating undergraduate research at UCL

A shortlist of students from across UCL presented their research to the panel and all presented their research to the UCL community at a lunchtime event.

Expertise from around UCL

The judging panel was made up of both students and staff: 
•    Sam Smidt, UCL Arena Centre Director 
•    Ruth Siddall, Student mediator 
•    Kaila Singh Sari, Head of Research, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 

Students who were selected

Two research posters were selected by the panel to represent UCL at Posters in Parliament, a national undergraduate research competition, on Thursday 7 March.
 
First place was awarded to Alice Pistono (pictured) who is a fourth year student studying MSci Natural Sciences in the department of Natural Sciences. She presented research on ‘DNA Degradation under shifting temperature conditions’ 

Second place was awarded to Ana Maria Ionescu, Delphine Tavernier, Roumyana Kotopanova, Maxim Sverjinski, Gonzalo Valdes Davila and Samuel Shannon who are second year students studying Biochemical Engineering. Their research was focused on ‘Bioethanol production from longline seaweed in United Kingdom’

Students influencing change

Ana Maria and her team told us how exciting it was to be involved in the event: 
“Taking part in competitions like this is important to us. Sharing our research on with the UCL community and getting as many people involved means that we can potentially influence change.”

Research-based education in action

Dr Sam Smidt said of the event,
”It is great to see research-based education in action from our undergraduates from first year through to their final year. The quality of research on display today is outstanding.”

Full list of shortlisted students

Those in bold were commended.

Division of Psychology and Language Sciences

Victoria Voelker, BSc Psychology
Disa Witkowska, BA Linguistics 
Nick Palatty, MSci Psychology
Navya Sharan, BSc Psychology

UCL Computer Science

Fazaan Hassan, MEng Computer Science
Bharaghavi Damodharan, MEng Computer Science

UCL School of Pharmacy

Joshua Gentry, MPharm Pharmacy
Trevor Lowe, MPharm Pharmacy
Xin Yi Thum, MPharm Pharmacy
Xie Jie Yeo, MPharm Pharmacy
Laylan Siddik, MPharm Pharmacy
Shuofei Zhang, MPharm Pharmacy
Zhi Xin Yan, MPharm Pharmacy

UCL Division of Biosciences

Sofia Esteban Serna, Msci Biochemistry
Akanksha Jain, MSci Cell Biology
Sophie Gray, BSc Human Sciences
Tom Edwards, BSc Human Sciences
Lena Kaisinger, BSc Human Sciences

UCL Chemistry

Tereza Kacerova, BSc Medicinal Chemistry

UCL Natural Sciences 

Alice Pistono, MSci Natural Sciences(winner)

UCL Physics and Astronomy

Dominik Kufel, BSc Physics

UCL Medical School 

Davina Puri, MB,BS Medicine
Marcellus Augustine, MB,BS Medicine
Victoria Ngai, MB,BS Medicine

Institute for Global Health

Sara Beqiri, BSc (Intercal) Medical Sciences with Global Health

Bartlett School of Planning

Jolene Lim, BSc Planning and Real Estate
Sebastian Borkiewicz, BSc Urban Planning, Design and Management
Anastassia Gusseinova, BSc Urban Planning, Design and Management

Division of Infection and Immunity

Sophie Sanford, BSc Immunology and Infection, Div. Infection and Immunity

UCL Economics 

Hannah Buttle, BSc(Econ) Economics

Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering

Jakub Zalesak, BSc Physics with Medical Physics
Sofia Erixon, BSc Psychology

UCL Biochemical Engineering

Ana Maria Ionescu, Delphine Tavernier, Roumyana Kotopanova, Maxim Sverjinski, Gonzalo Valdes Davila, Samuel Shannon (winner), Biochemicaly Engineering

Institutional priorities

Posters in Parliament is staged by the British Conference of Undergraduate Research and designed to show the growing emphasis on undergraduate research at UK universities. A key objective of our institutional strategy, UCL 2034, is to give all our students at every level the opportunity to carry out research.

Posters in Cloisters 2020

Further information on the next round of UCL Posters in Cloisters will be available from September 2019.