We are the Experimental Particle Physics group working on the ATLAS experiment which is based at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. We build and develop particle detectors, carry out data analysis, develop software and manage computing infrastructure and services for storing data and handling our experiments computation needs.

This project aims to mix scientific thinking and discovery led learning focusing on experimental particle physics. Inspired by historical breakthroughs such as the discovery of Neptune, where unseen effects led scientists to predict and verify new phenomena, students will learn how curiosity, observation, and data-driven reasoning power modern physics research. Through guided Python tutorials and data analysis exercises, students will gain essential computational skills to explore and interpret real particle physics data. The project emphasises how evidence-based investigation and analysis form the foundation of experimental science.

Other criteria: Students should have an interest and curiosity in science, programming and software.

Year group: Year 12 and 13
Discipline: Science and computing

Boulby Underground Laboratory is the UK’s deep underground science facility, located 1.1km beneath the North York Moors. Being underground is a rare but wonderful thing for science, enabling a wide variety of both pure and applied multidisciplinary research, including dark matter detector R&D, the testing of space exploration technologies, Earth science studies, quantum technologies, and more.

The outreach (communications and public engagement) team at Boulby Underground Laboratory take the broad array of science at the lab and find ways of communicating it to the world. Taking people down to the underground lab is very challenging, so the team are always working to find new and interesting ways of bringing the science – and the underground experience – to the public. Some methods of outreach delivered by Boulby Underground Lab include “live links” (virtual lab tours via online webinars), storytelling sessions with local primary schools, events at RAL, and sharing photos on social media.

As part of the placement, students will work closely with the science and outreach teams at Boulby to create digital and print resources relating to the science in our lab. This could include articles, social media posts, and short videos. Students can also assist in the development of new public engagement activities, help deliver craft sessions in Boulby live links, or collate ED&I resources to share with the team.

Other criteria: The placement will likely involve writing for social media or the development of new public engagement activities, therefore it would be desirable for interested students to be able to write to high quality.

Year group: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13
Discipline: other

The Optical Systems Cal Val group in RAL Space calibrates and validates observations of the Earth made from satellites. As part of the placement, students will be helping to improve the Python code that generates images for a Citizen Science project that asks the public to help validate satellite cloud masks. You may also be analysing the results of any recent datasets. You will work in a small team of students and gain experience working in a collaborative coding environment, and experience of working with satellite data products.

Other criteria: students should have an interest in climate, earth observation and Python coding

Year group: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13

Discipline: Computing and science

The Public Engagement team at ISIS are responsible for inspiring and engaging young people and the general public with the science and engineering that we do at our facility. Throughout the year we run a variety of events and activities, and develop online and printed resources for a range of audiences, including those that are hard-to-reach or under-represented in STEM fields. The Central Laser Facility uses lasers to do a range of exciting experiments, from recreating space in the laboratory to looking at the structure of atoms and cells. Our team at the Central Laser Facility are in involved in science communication and public engagement. To do this, we have to understand a broad range of complex science and then explain it in a way that makes sense to our audience. We’re involved in running events and activities, website content management, social media, graphic design, and journalism.

Students will have the opportunity to support our Public Engagement and Science Communication programmes by developing activities or resources based on the work we do at ISIS and CLF. This could involve comparing common themes between the Central Laser Facility and ISIS such as:

Imaging (taking ‘pictures’ of samples to understand what they’re made of)

Particle acceleration

Target/sample preparation

Space sciences

Biological sciences

Physical sciences

Engineering

Students will additionally prepare a short presentation for the end of the week about their work, with an opportunity for their work to be uploaded to the Central Laser Facility and ISIS websites and used at our engagement events.

This project will give the students the opportunity to explore a broad range of science, as well as being able to tailor it to any specific interest they may have. There may be additional opportunities, like interviewing scientists or doing some graphic design, depending on which direction they choose to take the project.

Other criteria: students should have a passion for STEM and demonstrate an interest in communicating it in creative ways to different audiences, as well as, an interest in learning about a range of scientific areas.

Year group: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13
Discipline: other

Boulby Underground Laboratory is the UK’s deep underground science facility. Located 1.1km beneath the North York Moors, Boulby Underground Laboratory hosts a wide variety of multidisciplinary science, including dark matter detection projects, Mars rover testing, astrobiology, beyond-Earth habitation, material screening, neutrino physics, Earth and environmental science, and more.

The science team supports the installation and running of the various experiments hosted in the underground lab, working with scientists from all over the world to facilitate high quality scientific research. We also run an array of detectors known as the Boulby Underground Screening (BUGS) facility – a world class material assay suite used to screen parts for a range of low background particle physics detectors including the current world leading dark matter detector. The science team is responsible for the operation of the BUGS detectors, analysis of their data and reporting of the results obtained.

Students will work closely with members of the Boulby science team to support one or more of the ongoing projects hosted at the lab.

Year groups: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13
Discipline: science

The Business Administration team is part of the Operations function in Scientific Computing. We are a team of enablers who support the scientists across the department, in a variety of functions and capacities, including email/calendar management, purchasing, travel booking, meeting support & management, event coordination, licensing, project/programme support, website management and so much more. We are a cohesive supportive team with a vast array of skills, who take pride in their work and proactively identify and implement improvements in practices and processes to maximise our effectiveness and efficiency, and that of the department.

This short project will require the placement students to review the Scientific Computing Hub usage, and gather feedback on the best and least visited pages from members of our community and possibly, other facilities, and make a proposal for the SC Hub’s improvement.

During this placement, the online students will:

– develop or further enhance their SharePoint skills

– design a suitable survey or feedback mechanism

– analyse the feedback and identify 2-4 even better if improvements

– present their findings to the Head of Operations and Admin team

Other criteria: an interest in administration, SharePoint and analysing data

Year group: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13

The Scientific Computing Department provides computing and software facilities to research groups across the country, and across the world through our partnership with CERN. As part of this, we manage a data centre: comprising clusters of servers across 100,000+ CPU cores and 500+ TB of Memory. These servers are both split down into virtual servers and made available to scientists to perform high-performance computing tasks; and they also run workloads for CERN and for our own research. A key consideration is of the environmental impact our high-performance computing facilities produce, as part of the UKRI’s dedication to reducing our climate impact over time to be net-zero by 2050. While part of this effort is in large changes such as changing how we source and generate the energy we use, part of it is in more efficiently using energy by making smaller, strategic changes.

During the online placement, students will gain access to our datacentre monitoring pipeline and perform data analysis on real metrics. This analysis will help us to make more informed decisions about how we can reduce the climate impact of our cutting-edge research computing facilities. Students will gain hands-on experience in Python and associated data analysis libraries; in the use of APIs; the operation of modern datacentres; Git for CI/CD; and more technologies which we use in SCD.

While working alongside three friendly mentors in the Scientific Computing Department, students will have opportunities to ask questions and learn about our work at the STFC. As part of the placement, there will be a chance to have a virtual tour of our datacentre on the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory site.

Other criteria: Students should have enthusiasm for computing and an interest in the work at STFC, particularly the Scientific Computing Department and High-Performance computing. Python experience is recommended but not essential.

Year groups: Year 10, 11, 12 and 13

Discipline: Science and computing

The Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire, is a radio and space field station. We operate a range of facilities focused on atmospheric science, future telecommunications and space situational awareness. Most of our expertise lies in radar instruments, and we work with various other groups to develop and maintain the capabilities they need.

As part of this project, students will help analyse and interpret data from some of our atmospheric science instruments.

Other criteria: Students will need previous experience of Python

Year groups: Year 12 and 13

Discipline: Computing and science

STFC Scientific Computing provide technical skills and tools required for research and innovation across a huge variety of scientific disciplines. We develop scientific software for applications such as Biomolecular modelling, Fluid Dynamics simulation and High-Performance Computing infrastructure.  

Processing and analysing data is foundational to modern science. In Scientific Computing we create Data Pipelines to manage large amounts of data from experiments across all scientific disciplines, from particle physics to biology. In this placement, students will write programs to process and analyse scientific data using tools like Python, Linux and git.  

Other criteria: Students should have an interest and awareness of computing and programming

Year groups: Year 12 and 13

Discipline: computing