The Sandpit brings students together in multidisciplinary teams, with the aim of developing novel research proposals that draw on their combined skills and research backgrounds to address real-world challenges. The teams are given four months to prepare their proposals before presenting them to a funding panel.
The overall purpose of this activity is to develop skills in negotiation, collaboration, grant writing, and presentation, with the added bonus of competing for up to £10,000 in funding to support their ideas as pump-priming or proof-of-concept projects.
In 2025, four groups competed for funding, with two teams selected for awards. The winning projects are as follows:
Identifying dark genome cancer signals that could guide the immune system to attack tumours
Michael Bryan, Eva Hanlon, Raul Cioca, Aglaia Skolariki
Pre-empting Vaccine Barriers in Lynch Syndrome: Profiling Immune Evasion Across Precancerous Progression
Nicole Cianci, Roy Rosman Nathanson, Alexandra Petukhova-Greenstein, Anna Prazmo, Dylan Muldoon