STFC Work Experience programme Summer 2025

Each year at STFC, we are proud to run a highly successful work experience programme.

STFC Work Experience programmes are open to young people who are living in the UK and in full time education in Years 10-13 in England and Wales, S4-S6 in Scotland and Years 11-14 in Northern Ireland. Individual work experience programmes may have further eligibility requirements based on distance from STFC National Lab sites. Please see individual work experience programme pages for more information.

Research shows that some groups of people are significantly under-represented in studying and working in science and related subjects. One of the most widespread instances is people from areas of higher socio-economic deprivation. To help address this, we give some priority to applicants from these areas, and take other measures to reduce the barriers to them taking part in the programme.

For the summer 2025 programme the Daresbury Laboratory (DL), Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and UK Astronomy Technology (UK ATC) work experience teams will be delivering work experience provisions for young people. We will be running on-site and online placements throughout the summer. 

Placements: information

Students will work individually or in a small group with one or two supervisors on a project relevant to their interests and STFC, which will meet the relevant Gatsby benchmarks. The placements will last 1-2 weeks and be a mixture of independent working and supervisor led sessions.

Many people work at STFC, and we are committed to making the workplace welcoming to all. If you are offered a placement and require any reasonable adjustments to get the most out of your placement or experience, please let us know via email at [email protected] (DL) / [email protected] (RAL) / [email protected] (UK ATC) / [email protected] (Online)

Applications via the online forms for on-site placements at all sites, and our online placements, will open in the new year.

Please use the buttons below to find out more, including any eligibility criteria:

How to apply to Daresbury laboratory, Cheshire
How to Apply to Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire
how to apply to uk astronomy technology centre, Edinburgh
How to apply to STFC online work experience

You can find more information about STFC sites and departments here

STFC Department links

For more information on our sites, please see below:

You can also use the following links to find out more about the departments at STFC.

Social Media Links:  

Examples of previous projects

There are lots of examples here from a range of departments. Use this list to have a think about which activities would interest you and what you would like to try over the week to help write your application. Students are matched to supervisors and projects according to their interests and ability. At the UK ATC students will work with different supervisors across the week.

  • Designing and collating website content
  • Creating social media posts, case studies and posters
  • Plotting data from particles using accelerator simulations
  • Creating an art piece to raise awareness of experiments on-site
  • Creating graphs using data from an x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data experiment Building a temperature sensor circuit using an Arduino/Raspberry
  • Writing code for the Large Hadron Collider
  • Analysing data from a Large Hadron Collider experiment
  • Using CAD (Computer Aided Design) software to solve a mechanical engineering challenge Using a computer model to investigate the impact of radiation on satellites
  • Investigating the thermal properties of materials used in space

Please note – these projects are examples projects from previous years and will not necessarily be the offered projects for 2025.