Summer Internship Advice and Opportunitites

 

List and Advice from Cornelia Lang

NASA has a ton of student opportunities, for kids as young as 9th grade through grad school, including everything from remote mentorship programs through summer jobs.

High School

• listing of camps from Sloan Career Cornerstone — includes lots of Astronomy things, such as one at Caltech and Sally Ride camps
• Astronomy Camp - Run by the Steward Observatory in Tucson, there is a beginning camp for younger teens on Mt Lemmon and an advanced camp on Kitt Peak where students write proposals and carry out projects on the telescopes.
• Summer Science Program - accepts rising juniors and seniors in California and New Mexico. Emphasis on calculus, computer science, physics, and astronomy in the context of observing asteroids for writing orbit determination software.
• MIT has a list of summer programs including RSI, WTP (for women), and MITES (for minorities) 
• International Astronomical Youth Camp – three-week summer camp for 16-24 year olds. No previous knowledge needed and grants available.

Available Internships

In the US

• NSF Listing of Astronomy REU sites - Eligibility: freshmen, sophomore, or junior undergraduates. US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
• Internships at NASA Centers.
• Caltech and JPL SURF Program.
• STScI Summmer Program- Includes education and public outreach in addition to research and also possibly open to grad students.
• USNO Internships
• NRAO summer student program: includes REUs, non-REU programs for undergraduates and graduating college seniors, and graduate students
• Google Summer of Code - Internships with projects like Astropy, Sunpy, and yt.
• LPI Summer Interns in Planetary Science- upper division undergraduates
• LPI Lunar Exploration Summer Intern Program- grad students and upper division undergraduate students
• NIST SURF in Boulder, CO or Gaithersburg, MD- undergraduates
• Physics REU at TCU (some astronomy projects available)
• Physics REU at University of Minnesota (has had astronomy projects in the past, also does space physics)
• Physics REU at Notre Dame (astronomy projects available, as well as nuclear astrophysics)
• Leadership Alliance - Summer research opportunity at lots of different schools that have astro programs. Includes Columbia, Princeton, CU-Boulder, Chicago, JHU, UMaryland, Yale, to name a few. Eligibility: US Citizens or permanent residents, undergraduate sophomores and juniors who bring diversity to academic study by reason of their culture, class, race, ethnicity, background, work and life experiences, skills and interests.
• CUREA, Undergraduate Observational Program in Astrophysics at Mount Wilson Observatory.
• Society of Physics Students SPS Summer Interships, including Mather Policy Intern program.
• Department of Energy Student Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (DOE SULI), includes astronomy research opportunities.
• Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC) - Research opportunities for students in astronomy and physics at small, liberal arts colleges in the northeast US.
• Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Physics and Astronomy REU:   Focus on providing research experiences to undergraduates who have either not had a research experience or are at an institution where research opportunities are not available for undergraduates. US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
• Dorrit Hoffleit Undergraduate Research Scholarship: Yale is offering a small number of summer reseach positions for undergraduates
• Astronomy Outreach Internships at Bryce Canyon National Park: 12 week summer internship designed to be similar to an REU but with outreach as the primary goal.  Funded by NSF. 
• Las Cumbres Observatory summer internships for undergraduates. 

Outside the US

• Cormack Vacation Research Scholarships (Scotland, undergraduates)
• ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics Summer Research Scholarships (Australian & NZ undergrads)
• ASTRON/JIVE summer student programme (undergrads & grads)
• Australian Astronomical Observatory Student Fellowship Program (undergrads from Australia-summer; undergrads from UK and other countries- winter)
• Australian Gemini Undergraduate Summer Studentships (undergrads from Australia)
• Google Summer of Code - Internships with projects like Astropy, Sunpy, and yt. Available to students all over the world.
• RISE (German program for undergrads from US, UK, Canada, and some European countries)
• Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (Warsaw and Torun, undergraduates)
• Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Taipei, undergraduates)
• Leiden/ESA Astrophysics Program for Summer Students (LEAPS; The Netherlands, undergrads & grads)
• ThinkSwiss (Switzerland, undergrads & grads)
• Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
• University College Dublin (Ireland, undergrads)
• European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) Trainee Project (Spain, undergrads & early masters)
• Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (Poland, undergrad upperclassmen)
• Royal Astronomical Society Undergraduate Research Bursaries (applications must come from undergraduate's supervisor)
• ASTRON/JIVE Summer Student Programme (Netherlands, undergrad)
• University of Leicester SURE Summer Program (Great Britain, undergrad)
• RECA Summer Internship Program (Colombia, undergrad)

Workshops/ Summer Schools

See the list on the Workshops page.