Opportunities

• High School Internships
• Undergraduate Internships
• Graduate Internships
• No previous experience in any scientific field is necessary.

What to Expect

Our Earth and biological sciences researchers are awesome. Inherently curious and lifetime learners, our group of mentors enjoy sharing their expertise with students considering a career in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics field.

Depending on your mentor and the work scope, you may observe experiments in a laboratory. Most of your time, though, will be spent learning about the scientific questions we’re trying to answer and how computation and biology are intertwined. 

Your internship has purpose. Some internship projects will support our computational biology group and others will support an internal Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) investment called the Predictive Phenomics Initiative. Computational biology and data science is a common theme among the projects. Twice during your internship, you’ll present your project progress to mentors and leaders, giving you an opportunity to hone presentation and public speaking skills. 

Duration

Internships are 10 weeks long, begin after June 10 and end by August 26. Within the 10-week period, students will participate in a 2-week “bootcamp” focused on computational biology. 

• Early start date: June 3rd (8 weeks)
• Late start date: June 17th (8 weeks)

Location

All internships will be in-person at on the PNNL-Richland campus. During the summer, PNNL hosts roughly 1,500 students, increasing our campus population to more than 6,000. We have fun summer offerings for all staff, such as outdoor farmers' markets and food trucks, and interns are treated to the Gold Experience - an intentional platform to launch your future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career.

The campus assumes a collegiate feel with various planned activities for interns, as well as summer offerings for all staff, such as outdoor farmers' markets and food trucks.

How to Apply

Our high school internship positions will open this month; you can apply for the undergraduate or masters internships now by clicking on one of the buttons below. 

Learn about other programs across PNNL or apply to other available positions here.

Bonus 2-Week Computational Biology Bootcamp

Required for high school and undergraduate interns applying to the internships on this page

Our bootcamp leaders are computer nerds at heart. Whether it’s analyzing massive amounts of data they receive from researchers or developing complex code for a model, they always go back to basics, including understanding a little bit of biology.

Join computational biologists David Degnan and Jason McDermott, in a 2-week collaborative training workshop experience where students will learn Python, R and biology—together—under the instruction of an expert. It is not school. There are no tests or quizzes. Instead, our leaders want to bring all students to the same base level of skills, thus building a cohort of individuals who can help each other as they run into issues coding issues during their internship project. 

All high school and undergraduate students, regardless of background, should attend the bootcamp. We’ll meet for 2.5 hours each morning, for two weeks. Another bonus: you’ll have the opportunity to meet students from other internship programs because the bootcamp is open to all interns. 

A sampling of this year's topics includes R, advanced R (high school optional), Python, advanced Python (high school optional), molecular biology, genetics, microbiology, and omics.