School dean Prof Helen Nicholson said she was pleased with the high quality of the students who had taken up the "dean's prestigious summer scholarships", being offered for the first time this year.
Prof Nicholson welcomed the students at a function last week and hoped some of them would consider pursuing postgraduate study in the medical sciences school.
The scholarships are available for 10 weeks - between this month and March next year - and offer return airfares to Dunedin, free accommodation and a $4000 stipend.
University officials said the scholarships aimed to encourage leading senior bachelor of science or bachelor of biomedical science students, many of them from out-of-town, who were considering postgraduate study, to come to Dunedin.
Jessica Kelly (21), who has just completed a BSc at Otago University and is the only Dunedin-based student to gain one of the new scholarships, said it was "pretty exciting".
Her research will focus on the therapeutic potential of drug combination treatments in heart failure.
The other scholarship recipients are: Kathryn Eddiehausen, Joshua Hayward, Lori Turner, all of Monash University, Melbourne; Nicole Batten and Jenny Cheng, of the University of New South Wales, Sydney; David Rogawski, of Williams College, Massachussetts, in the United States, and Emily McNamara, of Victoria University of Wellington.
