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 four 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:

  • January 18, 2021: List of projects available and application link posted
  • February 8, 2021: Accepting applications via either of these postings: Application link or Application link
    • Both postings go to the same application pool
  • March 1, 2021: Application deadline
  • March 8, 2021 – March 19, 2021: Interviews and offers
  • June 1, 2021 – August 6, 2021: SSEC Summer Programming Internship

Location: Madison, WI but the pandemic status may necessitate the need for remote work

Applicant Requirements:

  • Must be currently enrolled at an accredited U.S. institution,  completed at least one year as an undergraduate student and be enrolled in the fall

Application components:

  • Cover letter which must include: 
    • Statement of interest to work at 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 March 1, 2021: Click here or here to apply
    • Both postings go to the same application pool

Research projects:

  • Improving a visualization tool to more easily work with additional types of imagery in NASA Worldview. The current code is implemented in Python using SatPy and GDAL. (Remote)
  • Writing code, preferably in Python, to evaluate sea ice edge observed in the Arctic from passive microwave imagery using VIIRS data case studies to analyze the data and visualize the results. (Remote)
  • Working on a suite of data delivery, visualization and analysis software packages called McIDAS, programming in either Java or Python. (Remote)
  • Converting temperature calibration facility software interfacing with Fluke and Watlow temperature controllers from Labview to Python or C++. (On-site)

Questions?

Email Denny Hackel with questions at djhackel@wisc.edu