Skip to main content

PNNL

  • About
  • News & Media
  • Careers
  • Events
  • Research
    • Scientific Discovery
      • Biology
        • Ecosystem Science
        • Human Health
          • Cancer Biology
          • Exposure Science & Pathogen Biology
          • Metabolic Inflammatory Diseases
        • Integrative Omics
          • Advanced Metabolomics
          • Chemical Biology
          • Mass Spectrometry-Based Measurement Technologies
          • Spatial and Single-Cell Proteomics
          • Structural Biology
        • Microbiome Science
          • Biofuels & Bioproducts
          • Human Microbiome
          • Soil Microbiome
          • Synthetic Biology
        • Computational Biology
      • Chemistry
        • Computational Chemistry
        • Chemical Separations
        • Chemical Physics
        • Catalysis
      • Earth & Coastal Sciences
        • Atmospheric Science
          • Atmospheric Aerosols
          • Human-Earth System Interactions
          • Modeling Earth Systems
        • Coastal Science
        • Ecosystem Science
        • Plant Science
        • Subsurface Science
        • Terrestrial Aquatics
      • Materials Sciences
        • Materials in Extreme Environments
        • Precision Materials by Design
        • Science of Interfaces
        • Solid Phase Processing
          • Cold Spray
          • Friction Stir Welding & Processing
          • ShAPE
      • Nuclear & Particle Physics
        • Dark Matter
        • Flavor Physics
        • Fusion Energy Science
        • Neutrino Physics
      • Quantum Information Sciences
    • Sustainable Energy
      • Energy Storage
        • Electrochemical Energy Storage
        • Flexible Loads and Generation
        • Grid Integration, Controls, and Architecture
        • Regulation, Policy, and Valuation
        • Science Supporting Energy Storage
        • Chemical Energy Storage
      • Environmental Management
        • Waste Processing
        • Radiation Measurement
        • Environmental Remediation
      • Fossil Energy
        • Subsurface Energy Systems
        • Carbon Management
          • Carbon Capture
          • Carbon Storage
          • Carbon Utilization
        • Advanced Hydrocarbon Conversion
      • Nuclear Energy
        • Fuel Cycle Research
        • Advanced Reactors
        • Reactor Operations
        • Reactor Licensing
      • Renewable Energy
        • Solar Energy
        • Wind Energy
          • Distributed Wind
          • Offshore Wind
          • Uncertainty Quantification
          • Wildlife and Wind
          • Wind Data Archive and Portal
          • Wind Resource Characterization
        • Energy Equity & Health
        • Marine Energy
          • Environmental Monitoring for Marine Energy
          • Marine Biofouling and Corrosion
          • Marine Energy Resource Characterization
          • Testing for Marine Energy
          • The Blue Economy
        • Hydropower
          • Environmental Performance of Hydropower
          • Hydropower Cybersecurity and Digitalization
          • Hydropower and the Electric Grid
          • Materials Science for Hydropower
          • Pumped Storage Hydropower
          • Water + Hydropower Planning
        • Grid Integration of Renewable Energy
        • Geothermal Energy
      • Transportation
        • Bioenergy Technologies
          • Algal Biofuels
          • Aviation Biofuels
          • Waste-to-Energy and Products
        • Hydrogen & Fuel Cells
        • Vehicle Technologies
          • Emission Control
          • Energy-Efficient Mobility Systems
          • Lightweight Materials
          • Vehicle Electrification
          • Vehicle Grid Integration
      • Energy Efficiency
        • Appliance and Equipment Standards
        • Building Energy Codes
        • Building Technologies
          • Advanced Building Controls
          • Advanced Lighting
          • Building-Grid Integration
        • Building and Grid Modeling
        • Commercial Buildings
        • Federal Buildings
          • Federal Performance Optimization
          • Resilience and Security
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
        • Residential Buildings
          • Building America Solution Center
          • Energy Efficient Technology Integration
          • Home Energy Score
        • Energy Efficient Technology Integration
      • Electric Grid Modernization
        • Emergency Response
        • Grid Analytics
          • AGM Program
          • Tools and Capabilities
        • Grid Architecture
        • Grid Cybersecurity
        • Grid Energy Storage
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
          • Earth System Modeling
          • Energy System Modeling
        • Transmission
        • Distribution
    • National Security
      • Chemical & Biothreat Signatures
        • Contraband Detection
        • Explosives Detection
        • Pathogen Science & Detection
          • Threat-Agnostic Biodefense
      • Cybersecurity
        • Discovery and Insight
        • Proactive Defense
        • Trusted Systems
      • Nuclear Material Science
      • Nuclear Nonproliferation
        • Global Nuclear & Radiological Security
        • Nuclear Explosion Monitoring
        • Nuclear Forensics
        • Radiological & Nuclear Detection
        • Ultra-Sensitive Nuclear Measurements
      • Stakeholder Engagement
        • Disaster Recovery
        • Global Collaborations
        • Legislative and Regulatory Analysis
        • Technical Training
      • Systems Integration & Deployment
        • Additive Manufacturing
        • Deployed Technologies
        • Rapid Prototyping
        • Systems Engineering
      • Threat Analysis
        • Advanced Wireless Security
          • 5G Security
          • RF Signal Detection & Exploitation
        • Climate Security
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
        • Internet of Things
        • Maritime Security
    • Data Science & Computing
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Graph and Data Analytics
      • Software Engineering
      • Computational Mathematics & Statistics
      • High-Performance Computing
      • Visual Analytics
    • Lab Objectives
    • Publications & Reports
    • Featured Research
  • People
    • Inventors
    • Diversity & Inclusion
    • Lab Leadership
    • Lab Fellows
    • Staff Accomplishments
  • Partner with PNNL
    • Academia
      • Distinguished Graduate Research Programs
      • Internships
        • Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program
        • Diversity Internship for DTRA
        • Energy and Environment Diversity Internship Program
        • Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship
        • MSIPP-NNSA
        • PNNL Gold Experience
        • Regional Energy Innovators Internship
        • SULI and CCI Internships
          • Community College Internship
          • Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships
          • Visiting Faculty Program
      • Visiting Faculty Program
      • Joint Appointments
      • Joint Institutes
      • Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship
      • Minority-serving Institutions
    • Community
      • Regional Impact
      • STEM Education
        • Resources
        • Student STEM Ambassadors
        • STEM Ambassadors in the Classroom
      • Philanthropy
      • Volunteering
    • Industry
      • Available Technologies
      • Industry
      • Industry Partnerships
      • Licensing & Technology Transfer
      • Entrepreneurial Leave
  • Facilities & Centers
    • All Facilities
      • Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility
      • Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center
      • Energy Sciences Center
      • Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory
      • Grid Storage Launchpad
      • Institute for Integrated Catalysis
      • Interdiction Technology and Integration Laboratory
      • PNNL Seattle Research Center
      • PNNL-Sequim
      • Radiochemical Processing Laboratory
      • Shallow Underground Laboratory

Breadcrumb

  1. Partner with PNNL
  2. Academia
  3. Internships
  4. PNNL Gold Experience

The PNNL
Gold Experience

Delivering a premier
internship program

Every year, over 1,300 interns and research associates come to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to participate in internships that provide hands-on experience and research opportunities with leading experts in their fields. What you’ll discover as a PNNL intern is that this experience is much more than simply an internship – it is an intentional platform to launch your future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career.

When you become a PNNL intern, you also gain access to our prestigious intern development experience, called the Gold Experience. In addition to our engaging research internship opportunities, our premier program provides you with strategic professional development opportunities and networking to elevate your future STEM career.  

The PNNL Intern Differential

PNNL internships are intentionally crafted for giving the students an immersive research experience. We believe investing in interns today is an opportunity to champion the future experts of tomorrow. This enhanced model for delivering an internship is all about your comprehensive experience as a PNNL intern. Our approach embraces PNNL’s core values of collaboration, courage, integrity, and creativity. We’re committed to delivering a fulfilling, well-rounded experience from start to finish for our interns. This includes:

  • Comprehensive onboarding
  • Professional development series
  • Mentorship from leading experts
  • Leadership and peer networking
  • Research symposium and presentations
  • Championing the diverse & inclusive STEM workforce
  • Early STEM career preparation  
  • Launchpad newsletters
  • Exposure to Department of Energy and the national laboratory research facilities

Comprehensive Onboarding

Making sure you feel part of the team and are invested in PNNL’s is a significant priority we have for all our interns. We want you to know you belong and are important to our PNNL team. That’s why we intentionally craft these connections at the start of your internship, to help you network with others who will be an integral part of your PNNL experience. From new-hire questions to getting to know people throughout the Lab, this model is designed to foster your sense of identity and purpose as a PNNL intern.

Professional Development Series

We take our commitment to intern professional development seriously – which is why we’ve created a suite of workshops and seminars designed to elevate our interns. You’ll do a deep-dive into effective presentation skills, which is essential for research-driven careers. We’ll equip you with insight to develop a professional LinkedIn profile, which will help you stand out to recruiters and STEM employers on the top professional networking platform in the world. You’ll learn important tips on writing effective abstracts and research papers, discover how to overcome the all-too-familiar impostor phenomenon that many of us deal with, and much more.  

Mentorship from Leading Experts

Each PNNL intern receive individualized mentorship from leading experts in the field. Throughout your internship, you’ll get regular feedback and guidance from our world-class scientists. Each of our mentors is committed to helping interns learn and develop. They also participate in training that helps ensure your internship experience is valuable, effective, and professional. From diving into diversity and helping students identify their sense of belonging, to elevating your research expertise – our mentors are dedicated to your success. The opportunity to develop a professional network, engage in the culture of organization, and receive mentorship such as this is one reason interns return to PNNL for more internship opportunities.

Leadership and Peer Networking

Connecting with others and developing a sense of belonging within PNNL helps set our internships apart. At PNNL, you’ll discover one of our greatest distinctions as a national lab is the quality of people and the diversity of experiences that converge here to unite around our integrated science mission. Our success is all about our people. As a PNNL intern, you will have opportunities to meet our PNNL leaders, learn about PNNL’s strategies, and know the backstory of what ignited our leaders’ interest in science. You’ll hear from experts about their research and individual scientific journeys that led them to PNNL. Throughout your internship we intentionally create spaces for you to meet and get to know other interns in informal settings, virtually, and in person. Your fellow interns will be your future colleagues, so we prioritize the value of cultivating those relationships now. Ultimately, we create opportunities for you to grow your network and expand your experience within our PNNL community.

Research Symposium and Presentations

Each intern at PNNL contributes to significant work that supports the PNNL science mission. Our PNNL intern research symposium is an opportunity for you to showcase your project at a formal research symposium and to elevate your career by participating in this event. Our professional development series equips you with the skills to create a compelling abstract, deliver an engaging research presentation, and to have confidence in presenting your work. People from across the Lab, as well as your friends, family, and university professors are all invited to join. Students who do present at the symposium receive a certificate of completion and a recording of their presentation to bolster their professional career.

Championing the Diverse & Inclusive STEM Workforce

At PNNL, our people are our strength. Their voices tell our story. We are committed to solving the world’s most challenging problems and answering its most elusive questions. Diversity and inclusion of people and thoughts is part of our unique social fabric and key to our research success. It is also a daily personal commitment and expectation. That’s one reason we’re especially proud to invite our interns to actively join our community and to be part of our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). These are employee-driven, executive-sponsored groups organized around a shared set of characteristics, experiences, or purposes related to a historically underrepresented or systemically underserved dimension of diversity. Participation is open to all employees. The ERGs at PNNL enhance a culture of inclusion by providing professional, educational, and social opportunities. We hope you’ll join while you’re a PNNL intern!

Early STEM Career Preparation

As one of the most diverse, multi-disciplinary national laboratories that uses an integrative approach to scientific discovery, and as one of the largest STEM employers in the Pacific Northwest, PNNL is dedicated to training the next generation of scientists and furthering Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) mission in science education and diverse and inclusive workforce development. That’s why we are committed to ensuring every intern is afforded the opportunity to participate in our Gold Experience program, whether in-person or virtually. One way we invest in you is by hosting workshops focused on strategies to effectively launch into a STEM career. Additionally, interns who will be graduating (undergraduate and graduate) are able to request an individual conversation with one of our recruiters to learn about opportunities at PNNL, as well as gaining more insight into career pathways for other DOE and national STEM professional opportunities.

Launchpad Newsletters

You’ll quickly discover that life as a PNNL intern is packed with opportunities! During your internship our launchpad newsletters serve as a one-stop-shop to remind you of what is happening in our internship program, PNNL activities and events, and other key information pieces that help make your internship experience successful. This regular communication helps keep a consistent cadence of information coming to you, so you’ll never miss out or be unaware of what you can participate in while working as a PNNL intern!

PNNL

  • Get in Touch
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Doing Business
    • Environmental Reports
    • Security & Privacy
    • Vulnerability Disclosure Program
  • Research
    • Scientific Discovery
    • Sustainable Energy
    • National Security
Subscribe to PNNL News
Department of Energy Logo Battelle Logo
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is managed and operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn