Imperial College's BioART lab specialises in the field of assistive robotics and learning by demonstration. This summer they offered me a 10-week UROP placement in which my project was an investigation into the teaching of dance routines to a humanoid robot called Nao. This contribution could form part of a larger goal of having robot "buddies" comfort diabetic children in their regular, and often daunting, visits to the hospital.

My placement initially consisted of reading papers and discussing the topics with my supervisor and fellow researchers until I had a good idea of what motivates our projects and what all of the acronyms mean. I communicated with people from different universities and institutes to discuss the technical details of the humanoid robot, before jumping into the implementation of our theories. The work became incredibly rewarding when the robot began to move, since I was able to showcase my research to the various visitors who come to our lab.

In these two and a half months, apart from studying state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, I have learnt one very important thing - having a thorough understanding of your colleagues' work and expertise is essential in a research and development environment. Without it, you might spend days searching for a solution that someone across the room can tell you in five minutes. For a world-class facility like the BioART lab, the best sources of knowledge are the people inside.

All in all, my time spent here has been incredibly worthwhile. I now have strong connections with brilliant people in my field and a wealth of experience for the future. My work with the lab has not ended with the summer. Indeed I plan to coauthor a paper with a colleague over the next year. The best thing is, UROP students are still free to try out other career options and so next year I will probably look for a placement within a research company instead. Ultimately, UROP is a truly valuable programme and I'm glad to see Imperial College leading the way in the provision of such great opportunities.