Thursday, 03 December 2015 00:00 Written by 
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CISTIB Nuffield Research Placement 2015 - Edward A Cramphorn - September 2015
Over this summer we took part in the Nuffield Research Placement (Nuffield-Research-Placements), the first time we had undertaken such a placement here at CISTIB. The Nuffield Research Placement gives the chance for secondary school students to experience what university research is like alongside the experience of university life in an active research group. The aim was that the students undertake projects that were based on current research, and to allow them to work alongside professors and other academics.
In CISTIB we opened the call for projects to our members. We are proud to say our PhD step up and proposed projects based on their own work as well as volunteered to be the student’s supervisors. This year we offered five projects and we are happy to say we had five students join us. As part of this we asked them to prepare a personnel statement as if they were applying for a position, this helped them practice this important skill.
Projects involved such topics as computational modelling, biomechanical experimental testing and image processing. As part of this the students explored using software that is crucial to our research; such as Matlab (uk.mathworks.com) and GIMIAS (www.gimias.org) our in house image process software. This allowed the students to get hands on experience with the tools that our group uses and students at the university use in there degree programs.
Alongside taking part in the active research the students produced reports written to a scientific standard that is expected from researchers. They also presented to the group on the project they had undertaken, as part of this they answered questions from members of the group. Not an easy task. This taught them the skills that engineers need to present their work and will hopefully help them in their future education or career.
All the students did brilliantly and impressed the research group with their enthusiasm and what they achieved in such a short time they were with us. We are currently looking at running the placement next year from the success of this year, so watch this space. Or if you are interested in what we do or getting involved please get in touch.


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