SURE – Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience

By Muhammad Shuja

Are you not SURE what to do after completing your degree? Are you not SURE if a PhD is the right option for you? Are you not SURE why I’m saying SURE a gazillion times? SUREly, you’ll know it all once you read this blog.

The Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE, sorry had to!) is a program run across all the departments at the University of Sheffield where a group of students work on a six-week paid research project over a summer. It is a fantastic opportunity for students to get an insight of what it’s like to pursuing research-based opportunities like a PhD. I myself was part of such a project in the summer of 2017 where I worked in the Department of Physics. My project was to assess the use of thermal cameras to improve building planning and reducing electricity bills in UK households. We were fantastic team of physicists, chemical and software engineers who worked together for six weeks on this amazing project. We built various simulations and models to test our cameras and use those results to present a report, while I worked on building a website for the entire project for future research and surveying purposes (link given below).

A SURE project definitely enhances your CV and your skills to work in a team of people who put their individual skill sets on the table. It also improves your communication skills since you have to ensure that all work is divided among the team with a clear idea of the progress being made.  All projects carried out over the summer are then presented at the SURE showcase in the next year to give all new students an idea of what has been done previously. The showcase then presents awards to the best projects in various categories. I was quite honoured when my team received the award for the ‘Best Networking Project’, since it was one of the few teams who worked with students coming from different disciplines.

For me, personally, this was an amazing experience to explore an entirely new career opportunity, something which I hadn’t considered before. It gives you the confidence of making a sound decision when choosing a career path after graduation.  You get to evaluate whether you’d be more interested in research as an engineer or if you’d prefer working in a team on a more technical project. Unfortunately, for me as a Software Engineer, I’ll prefer sticking to coding projects in a team and telling my friends to restart their computers if they have a problem (trust me, it always works).

Now that you’re SURE about what SURE is, you SUREly would plan to apply to Sheffield to explore these excellent opportunities which SUREly develops your skills and enSUREs that you have a competitive edge in industry once you graduate, which you SUREly will. Please feel free to add the number of SUREs in your head to the point where you start hating me, if that point hasn’t already passed. I’m SURE it has.