The Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) offers paid 10-week summer internships where you can gain experience in a research environment. The main focus of the internships is programming, although there may be other opportunities for internships in a variety of research-related fields.

Our programming internships provide highly motivated students an opportunity to apply their coding abilities in support of cutting-edge atmospheric research. From year to year projects may include a combination of designing, monitoring, and debugging data ingest archival systems; creating and maintaining data analysis tools; and calibration, processing and visualization of atmospheric data collected from ground, aircraft or satellite based instrumentation in collaboration with partners and funders that include NOAA, NASA, NSF and DOE.

Interns will work individually with SSEC researchers to define the work to be completed. The intern will be provided with self guided tutorials on the programming languages and tools that will be used for the summer projects. Access to research and programming experts from SSEC will be available as a resource throughout the summer for questions on the tutorials and summer projects.

Experienced SSEC researchers will mentor and lead weekly meetings with the interns to discuss the challenges and successes of everyone’s projects. Minimum pay will be $17 an hour and is based on experience. Interns can work up to 40 hours per week during the summer.

Dates:

  • 21 January 2025: Listing of projects finalized
  • 29 January 2025: Application link live
  • 17 February 2025: Application deadline
  • 3 March 2025 – 21 March 2025: Interviews and offers
  • 27 May 2025 – 1 August 2025: SSEC Summer Internship

Location: Madison, WI

APPLY HERE!

Applicant Requirements:

  • Must be currently enrolled for Summer or Fall 2025 at an accredited U.S. higher education institution.
    • Undergraduates currently completing their freshman year or higher are eligible.
    • Graduate students (including Professional MS students) are eligible.
  • Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. Some positions may require U.S. citizenship or permanent residency due to funding restrictions.
    • If offered a position, F visa students would need to work with their home institution to obtain necessary authorizations.

Application components:

  • Cover letter which must include:
    • Statement of interest to work at the SSEC
    • Example of a relevant project that exemplifies your passion and drive
    • Up to 3 research projects from the list below you want to work on and why you would be a good fit
  • Resume
  • Accepting applications until 17 February 2025

2025 Research Projects:

  1. Develop tools for matching low earth orbiting satellite products with air parcel trajectories for studying air mass formation processes.
  2. Build two NASA – STELLA (Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment) Do-It-Yourself spectrometers and coordinating ordering of the parts. Possible 3-D printing required.
  3. Develop code for processing of high spectral resolution satellite radiance data and establish a routine/automated processing system.
  4. Design and implement a webpage to create interactive plots of meteorological satellite data from text files using Python and Javascript tools such as Plotly, Bokeh, Holoviz, and/or Flask.
  5. Install and test a data processing package written in C and Python for enhancing the spatial resolution of satellite microwave imagery.
  6. Develop code based on machine learning for producing super resolution satellite imagery from coarse resolution imagery.
  7. Develop a front-end view for monitoring the production and delivery status of products created by the NASA Atmosphere SIPS.
  8. The opportunity involves collaborating with a small team of SSEC scientists and engineers and industry focused on machine learning-generated, short-term forecasts of clouds and cloud properties.  A background in computer science, scientific programming (e.g., Python), data science, applied mathematics/statistics, or other related fields is required.
  9. Assist the SSEC webmaster supporting the SSEC/CIMSS mission by helping develop and maintain SSEC/CIMSS website and web applications utilizing React and WordPress.
  10. Work with SSEC communicators to write online and print articles spanning a variety of atmospheric, climate and Earth sciences. Gain experience working with multimedia forms like graphics, photography, video and social media.

Questions?

Email Chelsea Dahmen, Administrative Director (chelsea.dahmen@wisc.edu)