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EFI opens call for innovative student projects

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We are excited to announce the third annual call for EFI’s Student Research Awards.

We are excited to announce the third annual call for EFI’s Student Research Awards. We are looking for good ideas for data-rich and challenge-led projects that include a strong element of co-design and co-creation.

Your project could co-develop and create the research questions and/or co-create the final outputs with external partners, including industry, the public sector and the wider community. If you have an interesting and innovative idea for a research project, we want to hear it! Submit your application to our funding scheme by Wednesday 17 November.

Students are at the heart of the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s research activities. We support creativity and talent across the student body by funding up to 10 projects that relate to the Futures Institute’s key research programmes (Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence, Future Infrastructure, Creative, FinTech and Financial Services, Tourism and Festivals, Data Civics and Gov-tech). You will submit your entry to an interdisciplinary panel chaired by the Future Institute’s Research Director, Professor Melissa Terras.

Previous successes

In 2020/2021 EFI awarded ten projects in different schools and disciplines at the University, supporting student projects with a focus on innovative, multi-disciplinary research for the public good. Details on the awarded projects are here: https://efi.ed.ac.uk/efi-announces-student-research-award-winners/

Pushpi Bagchi commented on receiving the award, “The award helped further my research practice of developing participatory design methods that use graphic techniques and collaborate with researchers in other departments within the university to explore quantitative data analysis in transnational education services.”

Jack Suitor commented, “EFI’s support meant I was be able to turn interdisciplinary discussions with colleagues into tangible progress in the lab that we used to develop new biotechnology.”

Applications welcomed from across schools and colleges

We are looking for multi-disciplinary research questions that are risky, that challenge existing theoretical and methodological paradigms, and that have the potential to contribute to social transformation. Applicants must demonstrate an ethical research approach and follow University regulations and procedures.

Project applications will be of:

  • Clearly identified aims and objectives.
  • Novelty of the research questions and relevance of the project and relation to the key research programmes noted above.
  • Well defined users of research (stakeholders) and a plan for following up with them after the project.
  • Innovation in target group, activities, and/or methods.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute call is open from Monday 4 October and the deadline has been extended to Wednesday 17 November. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students at any of the University of Edinburgh Colleges and from all disciplinary backgrounds are welcome to apply.

Proposals must specify a budget of up to £1000.

Find the application form here and additional information here.

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