The EUTOPIA Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (EURSS) provides an opportunity for EUTOPIA’s students to develop valuable transferable skills, build their confidence, and enhance their CV and career prospects by leading their own international research projects.
Projects are designed by students in collaboration with supervisors at two EUTOPIA universities. Mobility is a key component of the EURSS: participants are required to engage beyond national borders to carry out their research projects. Projects in all research fields are eligible.
This virtual showcase highlights some of the fascinating projects carried out by the students who successfully applied for a EURSS bursary in 2022. Find out more about their projects, and about their experiences of participating in the EURSS, below.
Title: Co-living and wellbeing: comparative assessment on how housing cooperatives affect their members’ wellbeing in Spain and the UK Home Institution: UPF Home Supervisor: Toni Rodon Host Institution: UW Host Supervisor: Chris Rogers
Reflective essay:
"I have done a number of assignments for my degrees; however, I never had the chance to truly develop a project from start to finish on my own terms. That is, until I heard about the EUTOPIA EURSS Scheme, which allowed me to do just that: design and execute a research project about something I’m interested in from the ground up. I was very excited to learn that I had been selected to take part in it, even though accepting it entailed a certain grade of responsibility.
The EURSS experience had truly been fantastic, and I’m very grateful for this opportunity. It allowed me to travel abroad, meet new people and explore new places – and also research a topic that I have a lot of interest in, which is amazing. By all accounts, being sponsored to carry out research validated me, as I felt that my interests were appreciated and taken seriously. In a way, EURSS grant gave me a voice, as I wouldn’t have been able to do such a time-consuming project otherwise.
The most difficult part of carrying out such a project on your own was doing the fieldwork, at least in my case. Due to personal circumstances, I was only able to start organising the trip to the UK in August, which meant that some of my points of contact were on holiday, and I had a hard time scheduling interviews as a result. Alas, I was able to gather the necessary data and proceed forward with the project without any significant setbacks.
EURSS grant allowed me to apply my theoretical knowledge to a practical problem, which is one of the great merits of this opportunity. It put my project management skills to a test, and allowed me to get better at problem solving. On top of that, it gave me a glimpse of how the world of research worked; after all, I was able to successfully design and submit a research proposal, recruit supervisors, and compete for funding.
All in all, getting the EURSS grant allowed me to do a trial run for something that I’m seriously considering doing in the future – that is, research, and so far I’ve liked it. Therefore, I think that this experience will help me define my future academic (or industry) career, which is particularly important because many students have a hard time choosing a specific career path once they graduate."
Joan Rojano Borreguero & Lorién Gómez Solano (UPF-VUB)
Title: Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian basis for the European Fiscal Union Home Institution: UPF Home Supervisor: Marc Sanjaume Host Institution: VUB Host Supervisor: Sven van Kerckhoven
Reflective essay:
"Motivation
As the COVID-19 crisis seemed to come to an end in Europe, and only a decade after the 2008 financial crisis, inequality has been a matter of debate in Europe. However, EU institutions have not succesfully addressed this with European redistributive schemes, limiting its intervention to stability and growth recovery. Thus, we were interested in answering the following questions: Should Europeans redistribute wealth beyond national boundaries? And, how should we design our redistributive framework? This has been our main motivaton to participate in EURSS: to discuss redistributive justice frameworks with post-rawlsian theories of justice.
The research experience
EURSS provided us with funds to carry that research close to European institutions. We had the support of professor Sven Van Kerckhoven from Brussels School of Governance of VUB and professor Marc Sanjaume from the Political Theory Research Group of UPF. With their invaluable help, we could do research and periodically discuss our findings and conclusions with professors in a way we had not experienced in our undergraduate studies. Thus, the experience has been enriching as we could learn a lot about a topic we knew little about in a relatively short period of time. However, it has also been very challenging since redistributive justice is a broad topic and its normative application at EU level is limited in literature and restricting the study to certain aspects of redistributive schemes was difficult.
Developing our research made us consider innovative political proposals for the European Union and confirm the relevance of the European Fiscal Union given the current supply crisis and climate change. In that sense, we have prepared a paper based on our research and Lorién also had the opportunity of presenting it at the International Conference of Undergraduate Research 2022.
Would you recommend the experience to others?
As it has been said, EURSS has been a great opportunity to make an approach to the European Fiscal Union synthesizing knowledge from different disciplines such as Economics and Political Theory that normally appear separated during the Bachelors’ programme. Nevertheless, it represents more than an academic opportunity. EURSS is the perfect occasion for getting to know other universities and methodologies as well as different countries and cultures. In our case, we took the chance to visit Brussels as well as other Belgian cities. Moreover, we meet both local and abroad students that were spending their August holidays in Brussels.
Having said that, one aspect that could be improved would be the contact between universities for welcoming students in this program, so they can meet each other once they are there. All in all, we encourage every student interested in academic research to take this opportunity."
Benjamin Galbraith Title: To what extent does Carl von Clausewitz’s ‘On War’ accurately explain the factors amounting to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, and the subsequent conflict between Ukraine and Russia Home Institution: UW Home Supervisor: Oz Hassan Host Institution: GU Host Supervisor: Adrian Hyde-Price
Benjamin Galbraith poster EURSS 2022
Reflective essay:
"I was initially drawn to undertaking the EURSS from the basis of wanting to explore in greater detail one of the most influential academics in the field of international security and understanding in greater detail whether his work continued to be pertinent to this day. The ability to spend a prolonged amount of time of undertaking such high-level academic research, which would eventually materialise in the form of a dissertation, proved to impart upon me a great deal of nuance as to the processes within academia for undertaking research.
Having the opportunity to work alongside two tutors with interesting contrasts in understandings and approaches on political theory was truly a key motivating factor for expanding the remit of my research beyond a simple poster, as having their consistent support to guide the creation of a particularly high-level piece of research was extremely rewarding from the perspective of personal academic development. Of course, I came to accrue a number of other skills in the process.
One that continues to have a daily impact upon my work is that of high-quality planning. This is quite a basic skill, but up until the EURSS, I had little inclination to properly plan the pieces of work that I undertook, resulting in my research until this point being largely constituted of repeatedly hurling myself at a blank page for an unnecessarily long amount of time to garner a piece of work that I truly felt proud of.
Over the course of this project, I came to find that taking brief notes within a notebook whilst researching of possible threads of thought greatly accentuated the links that I would later be able to make. For instance, at the very beginning of my research, a concern of mine was how to tactfully approach the annexation of Crimea given the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February 2022.
Whilst prior to this I would have attempted to remember this while writing the work itself, having a deliberate note to refer to whilst undertaking the research enabled me to undertake highly nuanced analyses of other academics and how they tackled similarly controversial topics whilst remaining sensitive to the human cost of war. I can confidently say that I do not believe that I would have been able to undertake such an approach without this means of research analysis.
It is thus clear, in my mind, that I would like to approach a career that facilitates a similar kind of research, in which I can immerse myself within a topic for a few months before switching to another focus, hence my direction towards report-creating organisms, such as the United Nations and the OSCE.
Had I not had the opportunity to travel thanks to the generous funding, I do not think that the solely Anglo-Saxon perspective would not have enabled such a complex reading of Clausewitzian theory, and I am profoundly thankful to have taken part in this experience."
Title: Functional highly porous polymer scaffolds as simple mimics of the human bone marrow niche Home Institution: VUB Home Supervisor: Cleo Goyvaerts Host Institution: UW Host Supervisor: Ahmed M. Eissa & Emma Salisbury
Reflective essay:
"The first time I heard of EURSS was when I received an email from my university saying they have 5 available grants for undergraduate research abroad. I was immediately excited when reading about the various possibilities and knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I definitely had to take and could not let slip away. Unfortunately, the email I received was very last minute so I knew that if I decided to apply for EURSS, I would not have much time and would have to arrange everything right away. So it was with full courage that I immediately committed to this. I was eagerly looking for interesting projects within different research groups at my university (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) to then hopefully find a host university that wanted to accept me for a summer internship. Needless to say, I was incredibly happy after being told that the University of Warwick wanted to accommodate me for an internship.
Besides the topic of my EURSS project itself, one of the most interesting benefits for me was the fact that with this internship I would not only be doing international but also interdisciplinary work. This is something that has been emerging strongly in the upcoming years and I also believe that it is something we can definitely expect to see more of in the future. Combining research in chemistry with biomedical work is something that is not offered at our university. Seeing first-hand how these two different sciences can work together in a way to improve each other was a big eye-opener for me. On top of that, I was given the opportunity to get my first experience in the lab as an undergraduate student. In doing so, I not only followed up on my own project but also got the chance to get to know other ongoing research in these departments. Knowing that there are mostly Ph.D. students left in the labs in the summertime, it was also very useful for me to learn about what everyone was working on and make connections. I got a better understanding of whether, and why, I myself would want to follow in their footsteps later on, and was able to answer the remaining question marks in regard to my future career.
Besides gaining additional knowledge in topics such as polymer scaffolds and cancer therapies, this project honed many other skills. For instance, I was able to strongly improve my language during my month abroad. I also improved my writing, reading, and presentation skills in the context of scientific research by reading significant papers, writing my own abstract, and presenting my project at ICUR.
All in all, I found the EURSS project, which was made possible by EUTOPIA, a very enjoyable experience from which I was able to learn a lot. I would definitely recommend it to everyone as it can only be beneficial for your future life and career."
Alva Markelius & Sofia Sjoberg - Alva Markelius Gusmarkeal (left) & Sofia Sjöberg (right) Title: Engaging humans in gamified memory training and humanoid robots Home Institution: GU Home Supervisor: Robert Lowe Host Institution: CY Host Supervisor: Lola Canamero
Reflective essays:
"I had together with my friend Sofia done an extensive research project as our thesis in our final year of our undergraduate degree, but when we were finishing up the work both of us realised that we still wanted to work with and explore the subject we were researching. Our professor suggested we apply for this scholarship, and so we did. I am today incredibly grateful that we got this opportunity and that we applied, and the wonderful experiences we got out of it.
Me and Sofia have been researching human-robot interaction and differential outcome training as a form of digitised therapeutics for persons with Alzheimer’s disease as potential future cognitive interventions. The interdisciplinary nature of our studies have been incredibly rewarding and interesting, especially the combination of cognitive science and robotics. This is something we got the opportunity to develop even more because of the scholarship. We travelled to our host university CY Cergy Université in Paris with the expectation to potentially develop our study in combination with the existing research they were conducting at the ETIS Laboratory in Paris. It turned out to be so much more than that in the end. We got introduced to a new different French robot, called Reachy, much different from the Swedish Furhat robot we had worked with previously, and it was incredibly rewarding to learn and work with a new type of social interactive robot.
Together with the researchers at Cergy we developed a new study, combining their robot language acquisition research with our focus on differential outcome training. Once again we learned the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration and how to plan, develop and carry out scientific methods in a robot research laboratory. We also learned how to program the robots different movements and reactions to social stimuli as well as how to combine the simulated version of the robot in Unity with the generic programmed code. These are skills I cherish for having developed and that are incredibly valuable for me in my academic and professional life.
The study we designed in Paris became well received from both researchers and professionals in the field and we carried out pilot studies with a very promising and hopeful outcome. Now we look forward to hopefully keep working with this study and to carry out real experimentation, keeping the collaboration between University of Gothenburg and CY Cergy in Paris. Looking into the future I feel proud to have had the opportunity to go and visit another university to conduct research and I know it will be beneficial for me in several ways. Not only is it valuable to have experience in different contexts and countries, it is also incredibly rewarding to exchange ideas, perspectives, methods and procedures across nations, universities and cultures.
I would recommend everyone who is starting out their career within research and academia to take the chance to apply for this scholarship. It is a great way to start off your path into the world of international academic collaboration!"
Alva Markelius Gusmarkeal
"During the spring of 2022, me and my friend Alva Markelius got the EURSS Eutopia scholarship, which made it possible for us to visit CY Cergy Université in Paris during the summer to work on a project regarding human-robot interaction (HRI). With the help of our supervisor Robert Lowe (University of Gothenburg) we got in touch with our host supervisor Lola Canamero (CY Cergy Université).
Alva and I had previously done research within the HRI area, where we focused on humans learning a gamified memory task with Differential Outcome Theory and feedback from a Robot during our bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science. When arriving in Paris, we got introduced to the ETIS laboratory at CY Cergy where we got introduced to several different ongoing projects regarding robotics. By getting this insight on their current projects, we got inspired how to implement our experience and previous research regarding HRI.
Furthermore, we had thorough discussions with both our supervisor and host supervisor on what we can do to combine our areas of interest with their research. By having an interdisciplinary background combined with our previous research project we had the opportunity to design a new study with help from our supervisors. We got introduced to a french robot called Reachy, which they were currently working with on another project. The aim of their research was to construct a mutual learning situation where the robot and a human learn a language simultaneously.
We decided on implementing a Differential Outcome Training module in the language learning process, for a potential increase of language acquisition. Therefore, we implemented unique stimulus-response pairings via movements inspired by animals and babies so that the human has some type of association of the movements in the beginning. During our stay we designed the study, programmed all of the movements, and began doing pilot studies, which had promising results that in turn can be used to continue our future studies and research.
By getting the opportunity to work with several supervisors, we could combine a lot of interesting research, knowledge and reflections for our coming research. It was truly an incredible experience where I gained more knowledge regarding the subject, had the possibility to learn about ongoing projects and getting even more introduced to academia.
It was such a valuable experience to visit another university and a new context, get more insights in regard to research and be able to learn more about future studies. I am grateful that we had the possibility to do this, and thanks to the EUTOPIA EURSS scholarship we could continue our studies of interest."
Maks Koncilja Title: Applying Monte Carlo Methods to the Ising Model Home Institution: UL Home Supervisor: Mihael Perman Host Institution: CY Host Supervisor: Laura Hernández
Maks Koncilja EURSS 2022 poster
Reflective essay:
"I found application for EUSRSS project on our university website and I applied. Finding suprevisors was not an easy task, since EUTOPIA is still young and therefore not many know about it. After a virtual meating with my host suprevisor professor Laura Hernández and long mail corespondece with my home suprevisor professor Mihael Perman the project title was set on: Applying Monte Carlo methods to the Ising model.
As a part of a course on statistical termodinamics at uni we already learned about the basics of Ising model. Douring this project I learned much more about it and that was first time I used Monte Carlo simulations. I am very grateful for all the lectures and energy invested by professor Hernández douring my stay. That made the experience veary plesant. I spent my thime learning about Monte Carlo simple sampling method, phase transitions and critical phenomen, 2D Ising model in zero field, scaling on thermodynamic properties and critical exponents and Hoshen-Kopelman alghoritm for the determination of cluster distribution. There is a good chance that I will continue to expolre this area of pysics.
Because of this project I improved my coding skills and deepened my knowledge of physics. I met some new interesting people, got a chance to explore center of europe’s culture and visited many museums douring the weekends. It was interesting being on my own in totally new inviroment. I cerish this experience.
I would recommend the EURSS project to every student, the experience helps in the personal development of the individual. I think that it is important to gain experience abroad, this way new ideas and knewledge can circulate. The funding made it possible for me to take a part in this project.
For the future years the programme can be improved by providing students with information about accommodation possibilities."
Sebastian Smid Title: Development of textiles for personal protection using food waste extracts Home Institution: UL Home Supervisor: Marija Gorjanc Host Institution: CY Host Supervisor: Cédric Plesse
Tim Milanez picture Title: Amit conjecture- a Lie theoretical approach Home Institution: UL Home Supervisor: Urban Jezernik Host Institution: VUB Host Supervisor: Geoffrey Janssens
Žan Hedžet Kostajnšek picture Title: Design of an operational amplifier integrated circuit for photoplethysmography medical applications Home Institution: UL Home Supervisor: Aleksander Sešek Host Institution: VUB Host Supervisor: Joha Stiens, Joan Lambert Cause, Angel Solé Morillo
Žan Hedžet Kostajnšek EURSS 2022 poster
Reflective essay:
"I decided to apply to the EURSS because I saw the potential of doing my research in collaboration with a foreign university. Moreover, I have long been interested in studying abroad in the future therefore a visit to a foreign university could benefit me when taking such a decision.
The EURSS allowed me to experience a foreign research community, make new connections with foreign researchers and get knowledge about a course of action needed to perform a scientific research. Since the nature of my research is interdisciplinary, collaboration with a foreign university benefited me in gaining knowledge in both electronics engineering and biomedical engineering. I think that this experience wil leave impact on my future work in research since I have gained some fundamentals for this during this project. Moreover, I am certain that I will be able to organise my next visit abroad with fewer unneeded challenges.
If it had not been for the EURSS funding I would not be able to work at VUB for two weeks since the travel, accommodation and other day-to-day expenses are quite high. All in all, I was satisfied with the experience as a whole. I particularly enjoyed the organisation of day-to-day life in Brussels. I would recommend applying to EURSS to someone interested in both research and travelling. Since no student accommodations were available the only challenge I wish to expose was finding accommodation that would fit my budget."
