Undergraduate Summer Research Bursaries

Our Summer Research Bursaries support excellent undergraduate students from Durham University to take part in boundary-breaking interdisciplinary research during the summer vacation. 

Unfortunately for 2025 we cannot fund bursaries, however we are offering support to Durham University students who would like to apply for bursaries through external schemes.

What we can offer at a glance 

• Writing workshop for external applications.   
• Peer review of applications. 
• Introductions to potential supervisors. 
• Cohort activities to add value to applications.  

Examples of Potential Projects 

Below are a few indicative project titles. These illustrate the types of topics that are available, other potential supervisors will be able to suggest titles in their areas of research. Get in touch with us if you would like help to link up with a potential supervisor. 

Deep Generative Models for BioMedical Imaging and Analysis. Supervisor: Dr Jingjing Deng, Department of Computer Science. 

Live imaging of transport phenomena in ciliated systems and Modelling the embryonic heart. Supervisor: Dr Francesco Boselli, Department of Biosciences.

Redox-driven active transport. Supervisor: Dr Stefan Borsley, Department of Chemistry. 

Too greedy to survive: Tricking cancer cells to eat drug-loaded vesicles. Supervisors: Dr Margarita Staykova, Department of Physics and Dr Patricia Muller, Department of Biosciences.  

Using bacteria to build chemotactic robots. Supervisors: Dr Margarita Staykova, Department of Physics and Dr Gary Sharples Department of Biosciences.

Using machine learning to predict physiological responses: Working with cardiovascular data to create a machine learning model that predicts specific physiological responses. Supervisor: Dr Jonathon McPhetres, Department of Psychology.