In North America, almost all universities claim both the copyright and the patent rights to all inventions performed using university resources, even if you're not employed by the university.
That's why stuff like src/bin/csh/csh.c from NetBSD et al. say "Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 The Regents of the University of California.", and not "Bill Joy", who's the actual author of csh.
About the only university in North America that lets you use whatever university resources are necessary, yet still own full copyright and patent rights for any such invention is University of Waterloo, which explicitly boasts such status for its renowned engineering programmes.
Some other universities let you own the copyright, but almost all still reserve patent rights to themselves (including those in England); and these policies are claimed to apply even to the undergraduate students who aren't getting any financial support for their work! The intellectual property rights policies of western universities are almost always publicly available on their website, so, you should just search to take a look at yours.
As for whether anyone would be able to acquire a patent in the first place... In the US, you have 1 year to register for a patent since first publication; elsewhere, once the work has been publicly disclosed, no patent can be obtained anymore. Since you are usually obligated to disclose patentable inventions to your university, you should ensure your supervisor and second marker do not disclose your project prior to securing the patents.
