During the summer of 2018, Summer Student Bursaries were made available to undergraduate students to work on supervised research projects in the Department of Chemical Engineering during the summer vacation of 2018.

The bursaries provided living expenses and the projects lasted for 10 weeks. The aim of the projects was to give students a PhD-style experience for those students who might be considering a career in research after they complete their final undergraduate year at Loughborough University. 

Students worked closely with academic staff on a range of projects in emerging topics including:

“Development of living fungal membranes for the production of bio-Pd nano-particles from waste waters”

“Propeller noise reduction for drones”

“Generation of drug cocrystals in Lego-inspired microfluidic devices”

The students presented posters detailing the outcomes of their research at a celebration event on 5^th September and a prize was offered for the best research project:

1^st Place – Karthikeya Deshmukh (pictured above receiving his prize) – “Bioenergy from waste: waste pre-treatment for biogas production”

2^nd Place – Gemma Myachajluk and Alexandra Wright – “Development of digital and virtual reality-based process safety labs”

3^rd Place – Victor Parry – “Machine learning in a simplified driving world environment”

Karen Coopman, Senior Lecturer in Biological Engineering, oversaw the research projects and had this to say regarding the event:

“I would like to congratulate all of our summer bursary students on the work they have completed over the last few weeks. The posters were all high quality and it was a hotly contested battle for first place. This is a testament to their dedication and work.”