Gleb Berloff, 3rd year undergraduate student studying Physics with Astrophysics, submitted an entry to the Posters in Parliament event, based on activity cycles in Sun-like stars. The opportunity was advertised through IATL and included a tour of the House of Lords and Westminster Hall, a workshop titled ‘Get your voice heard in UK Parliament’ followed by the Student Research Poster Exhibition in the afternoon.

The event took place on Wednesday 5th March, and over 50 fellow undergraduate students from across the UK attended. Gleb’s project investigated magnetic activity cycles in data taken by the K2 satellite, their implications and their effects on their host stars and surroundings.

Gleb said “It was truly an enormous surprise to have been selected as one of only two undergraduate projects from the University of Warwick to present at this event, and I felt deeply honoured to have been selected. My astrophysics-based research mostly focused on understanding stars and if magnetic activity cycles were captured by K2 and whether they showed anything interesting. However, such cycles can have major effects on the surrounding planets, which is what I focused on during the event.

Everyone in my family was overjoyed by my project being selected, from Professor Natalia Berloff to Nina Trinko, my grandmother, a maths teacher and the first recipient of the Soros Prize in her region of the Soviet Union. But ultimately it was my grandfather, Gennadiy Trinko, who first started an interest in nature and astronomy in me, and it is a shame he did not live to see this.

The event consisted of 3 parts: aside from the wonderful poster exhibition, in which I had the opportunity to talk to motivated undergraduates from other universities as well as to policymakers and MPs, as well as a very interesting workshop and, of course, the tour of the Houses of Parliament themselves. Unfortunately, both chambers were in session during the visit and I never got to see them, but the excursion was more than fascinating even with what I did end up seeing!

One aspect that stood out to me during the exhibition was how much research was presented that had an impact on day-to-day lives, which made me nervous considering mine focused on astrophysics rather than medicine and everything related to that. However, I did end up convincing everyone I spoke to that my research, as well as similar efforts of searching for these cycles in different observation campaigns such as Kepler and TESS, can help us understand more about the magnetic field itself and how it arises, and, using that, perhaps one day predict a repeat of the Carrington Event and stop it from wiping out our electric grids. It almost happened in 2012, but I think it will happen for real at some point! Truly, it was a wonderful event, and I was deeply honoured to have participated in it!”

Posters in Parliament provides an opportunity for undergraduate students, representing universities from across the UK, to exhibit their research in Westminster. The event gives the opportunity for legislators and policy makers to see first-hand some of the innovative research taking place across the country. The event is part of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR), an open coalition of universities dedicated to encouraging a national culture of undergraduate research.