Our Vision and Eye Research Unit (VERU) recently welcomed a new group of summer students to the Cambridge Campus. The undergraduate students, who are studying both at Anglia and further afield, will provide support and assistance to the various research projects being undertaken within VERU during the summer months. The scheme gives the students a great opportunity to gain an invaluable experience of undertaking leading research in the field of Vision Sciences.

Undertaking this years summer placements are:

Kevin Chung, from New York University Medical School, and Julie Hughes (2nd Year Optometry), who have been working with supervisor Dr Keziah Latham on a project to assess the legibility of medicine labels for people with impaired vision.

Anika Sharma (2nd Year Optometry) is working with Supervisors Dr Andrew Kolarik, Dr Matthew Timmis and Dr Silvia Cirstea on a project investigating how sensory substitution devices using ultrasonic-echo location can be used to help blind and visually impaired users detect objects in their path. Anika is testing how these devices are able to guide users to avoid collisions when passing through doors and openings.

Komal Ramlagun (2nd Year Optometry) is working with Dr Andrew Kolarik and Dr Silvia Cirstea investigating whether blind and visually impaired listeners are better than sighted listeners at using changes in sound level and the echoes in reverberant rooms to perceive how far away sounds are.

Aimee Lee Roberts (3rd Year Psychology) is working with Dr Peter Hills and Dr Ian Van Der Linde on a project funded by the Experimental Psychology Society investigating the impact of social pressure on face recognition performance.

Alexandra Edwards (3rd Year Psychology) is working with Dr Ian Van Der Linde on a new Monte Carlo model to estimate visual working memory capacity.

Sharon Buckland (3rd Year Psychology) is working with Raju Sapkota, Dr Ian Van Der Linde and Dr Peter Bright on a project to measure visuo-spatial binding in recall and recognition paradigms.

Dr Loveena Delori is working with Dr Madhavan Rajan on a corneal endothelial research project. Halzska Pelkowska and Charlotte Redmond are working on a project with Dr Ian van der Linde and Dr Peters Hills to study the binding of eye movements to objects during visual matching.

Halzska Pelkowska (3rd Year Psychology) and Charlotte Redmond are working on a project with Dr Ian van der Linde and Dr Peters Hills to study the binding of eye movements to objects during visual matching.

In addition, VERU has also hosted Dr Ruth Van Nispen from VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam this summer. Ruth is working with researchers at VERU developing collaborative research projects in the area of low vision. Ruth also delivered a well-received seminar during her visit entitled "Improving the quality of rehabilitation in the visually impaired - An overview of low vision research in Amsterdam".