Summer internships I can host
Varies by scheme Undergraduate 8–10 weeks Start: Summer
Eligibility: Undergraduates part-way through a degree in engineering, physics, mathematics or a related subject. No prior research experience expected.
Most summer research schemes — departmental, national, or run by your own university — require a host who agrees to take you before you can apply. I am available to act as that host. If you are applying to a scheme that funds a summer research placement and need a supervisor at Cambridge, write to me.
Routes that work
- Cambridge undergraduates — departmental summer research schemes and college bursaries, advertised internally by the Department of Engineering in the spring.
- National schemes in your own country — many science foundations and government programmes fund undergraduates to spend a summer in a foreign lab, and nearly all of them ask for a letter from the host before the deadline. If you are eligible for one, name it in your first email; it changes what is possible.
- Placements required by your degree — if your own university requires a research placement for credit, that arrangement usually works here too.
I would rather hear from you with no funding identified than not hear from you at all, but be honest with yourself that the unfunded route is much harder to arrange and often not possible at all.
What the work looks like
Eight to ten weeks on one well-defined piece of a larger problem — building a piece of apparatus, running an experiment, or getting a computation to agree with a theory that says it should. You would be working alongside the group rather than alone, and presenting what you found at the end. Past summer projects have come out of the soap film, optimization and biolocomotion work, and several turned into papers. A number of the people on the team page started this way.
When to write
Write in the winter, not in May. Most schemes close between January and March, the host letter has to exist before you submit, and by the end of term the group is full. Send a CV, your transcript, the name of the scheme you are applying to and its deadline, and a short paragraph on which project interests you.