Students: a fresh taste for contact lens research

Offering free cupcakes to recruit people to take part in a survey may not be a conventional research method but for optometry student Hanifa Begum it solved a problem.

Hanifa is a final-year student at Aston University and one of the first undergraduates in the UK to take part in a new initiative from the Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Institute. As part of its Success Through Education Programme (Step), the institute is offering two students a year the chance to conduct an educational project around contact lenses and/or anterior eye.

Students towards the end of their penultimate year of study are invited to choose to conduct a survey and/or literature review from a list of topics. Each university is then invited to put forward one applicant for the selection committee to consider.