{"id":495,"date":"2026-07-13T12:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/?page_id=495"},"modified":"2026-07-13T15:31:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:31:30","slug":"2024-scholars","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/2024-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Scholarship 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Summer<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Summer Scholarships for Black Students<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Since 2020, KMi has supported six scholars to participate in summer projects on topics which include: Misinformation, Robotics, Human Computer Interaction, Blockchain and Knowledge Graphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A KMi Scholarship provides financial support for students to use hot technologies to solve societal challenges and positively impact the world around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scholarship package provides a bursary, mentoring, and support from the researchers, students and technicians who work in our project spaces. The bursary can be used to cover scholars’ living costs or make up for their loss of earnings during the summer while they carry out a project lasting 6 to 8 weeks. Projects may be conducted online, at the Open University campus, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email:<\/strong> STEM-KMi-Scholarship@open.ac.uk<\/a> to express an interest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Three bursaries were awarded in 2023. Read all about the scholars’ projects here.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\"Challenge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenge 1: From “Huh?” to Aha! Cracking the code of research papers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Subject Area:<\/strong> Artificial Intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supervisory Team:<\/strong> Audrey Ekuban<\/a> and Venetia Brown<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholar:<\/strong> Oke Onyebuchukwu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we make studying more engaging and interactive?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meet Oke, whose research transforms research papers into interactive learning experiences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oke came to KMi during the summer while studying Mathematics and Computer Science at university. His project focused on ways to transform student engagement with research papers by developing the Research Companion app. Oke used Retreval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology and prompt engineering to simplify access to academic literature by using functionalities such as summarisation, visual aids generation, quizzes and a chatbot. His evaluation of the chatbot’s performance across different temperature settings reveals that higher temperatures yield more consistent and reliable outputs. However, the quality of responses is dependent on the retrieval process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Empowering students with generative AI to support academic reading<\/strong>. Oke’s research is important in providing more inclusive educational tools that leverage AI to support the diverse learning needs of students. Using the Research Companion App makes research more interactive and accessible and might help those struggling with reading activities engage more easily with complex materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out Oke talking about his experiences on the scholarship, and watch the demo of his app<\/a>. His report can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concept Overview<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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