Summer Research Opportunity in MCS for CMU students

This site describes a funded summer research internship opportunity for CMU students in the Mellon College of Science (MCS) through the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium:

We are pleased to announce the availability of funding for summer research internships for students carrying out research in any STEM-related field during summer 2024! Students supported through this opportunity will participate in the MCS Summer Scholars Program, which provides valuable social and professional development opportunities to students in a variety of undergraduate research programs throughout MCS. We strongly encourage applications and participation from students from groups that are under-represented in STEM!

Where possible, these grants will be used to connect new MCS faculty with undergraduate research, and to provide opportunities to students new to research.

Program requirements associated with the funding source are as follows:

• Funded students must be citizens or permanent residents of the US.
• Research can be in any area within MCS that would fulfill this program's goal, which is to help build a diverse STEM workforce, contributing to NASA's STEM Educational Office Goal 2.0.
• The faculty mentor must be expending $4,480 from a non-federal funding source on research that is related in any way to the project the student will do. The matching funds can be used for any part of the project (e.g., other students' salaries, equipment, supplies, faculty summer salary, etc.). In practice, these matching funds may be internal funds such as start-up, or external funds such as foundation grants. The benefit to mentors is that if they have a project that expends funds from non-federal sources, they can support the internship student for the summer using funds from the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. The matching funds must be expended within one year of when the student begins to work with the mentor.
• Since this is a full-time research program, students may not have any other funded research during the period of this project.
• Students should be available to participate in the MCS Summer Scholars Program, May 28th to July 20th, 2024.
• Students must provide a final report on their work, in whatever form they and their advisor wish, due on the last day they are paid by the grant. The report must include one separate paragraph telling how this research experience has impacted their career plans.

6 student interns will be selected each year. Each intern will be paid $13/hr for 8 weeks at 40 hours per week (i.e., up to 320 hours during the entire summer). Students will be hired as hourly workers and will be paid every two weeks based on hours worked.

For more information about this program, please reach out to Rachel Mandelbaum, rmandelb [at] andrew.cmu.edu.