The Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) is excited to offer a paid 10-week summer programming internship where you can gain experience coding in an academic research environment.

Our internship provides highly motivated undergraduate 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 programming experts within our scientific instrumentation software team will be available as a resource throughout the summer for questions on the tutorials and summer projects.

A member of the scientific instrumentation software team will lead weekly meetings with the interns to discuss the challenges and successes of everyone’s projects. Minimum pay will be $16.25 an hour and based on experience. Preferably 40 hours a week but accommodations can be made due to restrictions to those already employed by the University of Wisconsin – System.

Dates:

  • 11 January 2023: Listing of projects finalized
  • 23 January 2023: Application links live
  • 24 February 2023: Application deadline
  • 6 March 2022 – 17 March 2023: Interviews and offers
  • 30 May 2023 – 4 August 2023: SSEC Summer Programming Internship

Location: Madison, WI

Applicant Requirements:

  • Must be currently enrolled at an accredited U.S. higher education institution.
    • Undergraduates currently completing their freshman year or higher are eligible.
    • Graduate students are eligible.
  • Must be enrolled for undergraduate or graduate programs for Fall 2023.
  • Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S.
    • 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 programming project that exemplifies your passion and drive for programming
    • Up to 2 research projects from the list below you want to work on and why you would be a good fit
  • Resume
  • Accepting applications until 24 February 2023

Research projects (Updated for 2023):

  • Design and implement a webpage to create interactive plots of meteorological satellite data from JSON files using Python and Javascript tools such as Plotly, Bokeh, Holoviz, and/or Flask. Click here to apply

  • Learn about and participate in development and testing of meteorological instrumentation subsystem prototypes using hybrid FPGA real-time control and signal processing systems. (2 positions) Click here to apply

  • Create computer animations on the capabilities of the SSEC Portable Atmospheric Research Center (SPARC). Click here to apply

Questions?

Email Denny Hackel with questions at djhackel@wisc.edu