I took up a UROP placement after my second year in EEE for nine weeks during the summer holidays. At that point I was still undecided whether to pursue a PhD at some point in my life or not. A UROP placement was the excellent opportunity to find out more about what academic research is all about. It is a chance to take a much deeper look into a particular area in your subject field whist working on one particular project. I had the opportunity to work on an implementation for an Image processing technique on a FPGA. As a result I personally have a much better grasp on what working on a PhD would be like and feel a lot more prepared for one. I also learned about Signal and Image processing as well as considering specific design aspects when working with FPGAs.