Here is a list of summer undergrad/first year grad astronomy internships I'd suggest. I've included a few contacts. Start with the NSF REU site: https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp (Feb 2022 site) - check out astronomy, physics, also international science (a grab-bag of fields) Also, check out the AAS website: http://www.aas.org Click on "Careers" then "Job Register". There are *a few* summer internships there. Finally, go to NASA: https://intern.nasa.gov/ There are hundreds of opportunities there: internships, "pathways" to jobs, fellowships and international internships for foreign nationals. Johns Hopkins U/Applied Physics Lab (where alumna Shannon Mackenzie works): https://careers.jhuapl.edu/internships STScI (deadline sometime before end of January): https://www.stsci.edu/opportunities/space-astronomy-summer-program There are DEFINITELY more! These institutions should be checked out for summer internships, too. Search for them - you should do the work to look for a job. Know in advance: there are probably 300-400 applicants for REUs around the country, and many of them apply for most of the REUs. Each REU has only about 5-10 positions. So, getting into any particular REU can be hard, and in fact some UL students have been shut out of REUs some years. Try to find the best "fit" you can, relying on your skills and/or common research contacts with UL or other faculty, and apply to enough (probably 10-15 programs) so that you have a decent chance to succeed. Here are some tips on applying for post-doctoral fellowships which apply to summer internships, too, by Dorottya Szecsi: https://astronomycommunity.nature.com/posts/11-tips-on-how-to-apply-for-a-fellowship The Society of Physics Students has a program in the Washington DC area: https://aas.org/posts/opportunity/2016/12/society-physics-students-2017-summer-internship-program deadline 15 Jan 2017; this offer may repeat in future years Some major ones include: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt MD Boston U Catholic U of America (a second way to work at GSFC) - contact Dr. Steve Kraemer at CUA Physics Chicago (U of) Harvard/Center for Astrophysics Hawaii (U of) Maria Mitchell Observatory Michigan (U of) Northwestern Wisconsin (U of) NASA Ames, Mountain View CA# http://eap.usra.edu/ (positions for all NASA centers, really) NASA Goddard, Greenbelt MD NASA Johnson, Houston TX NASA Marshall, Huntsville AL Jet Propulsion Lab Fermilab Los Alamos National Lab http://www.lanl.gov/careers/career-options/student-internships/index.php Phil Blom, a UL grad from 2007, is a post-doc there in 2016 Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, Tucson National Optical Astronomy Observatories (both Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo) www.noirlab.edu https://noirlab.edu/science/news/announcements/sci24040 Gemini Observatory www.gemini.edu National Solar Observatory www.nso.edu Space Telescope Science Institute www.stsci.edu Arecibo Radio Observatory (Puerto Rico) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (3 sites: Charlottesville VA, Green Bank WV, Socorro NM) Center for Astrophysics (based at Harvard) Naval Research Lab (Washington DC) McDonald Observatory (Texas) http://www.as.utexas.edu/reu/ Maria Mitchell Observatory (Nantucket) Lawrence Berkeley Lab Lowell Observatory www.lowell.edu SETI Institute www.seti.org This is not a full summer program, but rather a week in mid-August, good for a freshman or sophomore. It's one week at the Green Bank Radio Observatory (6 hrs from Louisville by car). U North Carolina runs it. Applications are due by April 15. You should have some programming experience and at least Gen-Ed astronomy if not calculus-based. See https://www.danreichart.com/erira/ worth trying: Fermilab Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (Colorado) Southwest Research Institute any university with a big astronomy department/program, including but not limited to *Univ. California at Irvine *UCLA *Univ. California at San Diego (UCSD) Univ. California - other campuses: Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Davis, Riverside etc. Stanford U. Caltech Observatories of Carnegie Institute Dept. of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institute (Washington DC)# Univ. Washington# U. Arizona Arizona State U.# U. Colorado Univ. Arkansas, both Fayetteville and Little Rock Penn State# Cornell (runs Arecibo) *UNLV *Univ. Oregon *Univ. Toledo *Univ. Wisconsin Univ. Wyoming Infrared Observatory etc. # = has some astrobiology Here are some International internships: MPIA-Heidelberg (deadline mid-January): https://www.mpia.de/en/careers/internships/summer and ESO (deadline end of January): https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2023/SummerResearch2023.html (change the URL accordingly for future years) Cambridge, England (deadline late February): https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/students/summer.research.programme This one is open to all nationalities to work with Leiden astronomers: https://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/summerstudents/ Deadline is in early February. ASTRON/JIVE (Netherlands Inst. for Radio Astronomy; Joint Inst. for VLBI ERIC) - Summer Student Programme, Dwingeloo, Netherlands: https://www.astron.nl/summerstudent/ Kupcinet-Getz Program, Weizmann Institute, Israel: https://www.weizmann.ac.il/feinberg/admissions/kupcinet-getz-international-summer-school/about-program-0 (deadline Oct 1 for following summer!!) open to all nationalities, religions etc. Note: they pay a stipend, but no travel money; 3.6 GPA minimum These are probably easier for those with an EU/ESO member state/ESA member state passport European Southern Observatory - Munich, maybe Chile www.eso.org European Space Agency - mainly Madrid, Nordwijk (near Amsterdam) Try lots of British (and other) universities/observatories/institutes: Royal Observatory Edinburgh Universities U. Cambridge, Institute of Astronomy Oxford U Durham University Imperial College London Queen Mary College London Observatoire de Paris Meudon Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) www.iap.fr CERN, Geneva SISSA, Trieste www.sissa.it SUMMER SCHOOLS WHICH ARE WORTH TRYING: Dunlap Summer School, Toronto (mid-August, deadline mid-April) dunlap.utoronto.ca/summer-school * had UL summer student in physics (P) or astronomy (A) (partial list): Roseanne Cheng, UL BS 2005, got PhD UNC 2012, then a post-doc at JHU A 2006 Chip Davidson, Univ. Toledo (later got Master's in astronomy there, taught in Bullitt Cty, currently a principal in Louisville) P 2006 Wes Miller, UCSD (later won Fulbright to Hungary) P 2006 Blakesley Burkhart, Univ Alaska-Fairbanks P 2007 Wes Miller, Oregon (got PhD there a few years later) A 2007 Blakesley Burkhart, Univ. Wisconsin (got PhD there, then Einstein Fellow at Harvard, now faculty at Rutgers, 2019 AAS AJ Cannon Award, 2020 Packard Fellow; 2021 APS 2022 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award) P 2008 Katie Davis, UC-Irvine (PhD Purdue, post-doc Princeton, faculty member Emory U) A 2010 Shannon Mackenzie, UCLA (started PhD at U. Idaho) P 2010 Jennifer Wojno, UNLV, high pressure physics P 2010 Paul Davis, Purdue (project: Fluorescence of quantum dots on a graphene substrate) A 2011 Jenna Lichtenberger, Penn State A 2011 Jennifer Wojno, Arkansas (started PhD at U. Potsdam, Germany, currently post-doc at JHU) A 2011 Ryan Sanders, Wisconsin (project: IFU spectra of a post-starburst galaxy) (PhD at UCLA, post-doc at UC-Davis; 2020 Hubble Fellow (very prestigious!); 2023 faculty U Kentucky A 2011 Shannon Mackenzie, Birmingham, England (funded by NSF via UFlorida), under Andreas Freise, gravity waves also 2.5 weeks at ETH Zurich, under Antonio Pipno, brightest cluster galaxies (funded by Goldwater); did PhD at Idaho; post-doc at JHU Applied Physics Lab A 2012 Jared Keown, Bucknell A 2013 Jared Keown, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Virginia (project: molecular emission of star formation cores, with SSchnee; PhD U Victoria, BC, Canada; working for industry in Sweden) A 2013 Blake Pantoja, UCLA (project: planets around white dwarfs, with MJura) A 2014 Blake Pantoja, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (started PhD at U. de Chile) P 2015 Conrad Smart, Cornell, accelerator physics A 2016 Nick Duong, SETI Institute (project with Michael Busch: mapping boulders on Asteroid 1992 UY4 and looking at distribution; PhD place at UC Irvine) E 2016 Ian-Michael Mason (math maj., physics min.), NASA-Marshall, engineering semester internship spring 2016 P 2016 Brent Mode, Purdue, Dark Matter detector design P 2016 Logan Riney, Toledo, surface physics P 2016 Conrad Smart, UCLA, physics, theoretical plasma physics (started PhD at Cornell) P 2017 Melanie Dieterlen, U. Arizona P 2017 Bryan Harris, Notre Dame A 2017 Brianna Mills, Wisconsin, "X-ray Light Echos in the Swift Archive" (got PhD at Virginia, 2023, went to industry) P 2017 Brent Mode, U Michigan, On Golden Gates and Discrepancy: Examining the Efficiency of Universal Gate Sets (started PhD at Wisconsin) P 2017 Logan Riney, Kansas St. - went to Notre Dame for graduate school P 2018 Meghan Carrico, Summer internship at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia (PATHWAYS-see USAJOBS, ozone variation measurements) I 2018 Bryson Clifford, Summer Internship Honda of America, Columbus, OH I 2018 Benjamin Meredith, Internship ATI Forged Products, Lebanon, KY P 2019 Meghan Carrico, Summer internship at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville AL (PATHWAYS, space environmental effects on materials; X-ray & Cryogenic Facility [e.g. for space telescopes]) P 2019 Bryson Clifford, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia (worked in chem lab, characterizing laminates) P 2020 Meghan Carrico, Summer internship at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville AL, topic TBA; 2021 became civil servant at NASA-Marshall A 2021, 2022 Lori Porter, Summer Internship at Flatiron Institute, New York NY, on FIRE-2 simulations to study dwarf galaxies, circumgalactic gas metallicity and star formation rates A 2021 Chris Henry, Summer Internship at ESA/ESTEC, under Rachana Bhatawdekar P 2022 Thomas Hulse, Georgetown U REU; started PhD at Rice, autumn 2023 A 2023 Jean Gorce, Kansas, radio emissions in coincidence with muons from cosmic air showers (IceCube-related; Dr. Dave Besson) A 2025 Divya Patel, U Kentucky A = astronomy P = physics I = industry Selected other destinations for our graduates (not complete): c. 2000 Roseanne Cheng, PhD 2012, UNC, to Los Alamos National Lab c. 2008 Phil Blom, BS c. 2008, PhD c. 2013, to Los Alamos National Lab c. 2020 Joe Burchett, MS c. 2011, PhD c. 2016, faculty at New Mexico St. c. 2020 Shannon Mackenzie, BS c. 2011, PhD c. 2016, to JHU Applied Physics Lab, planetary science 2019 Vicki Knoer - PhD position at Colorado, satellite hardware 2019 Samir Kusmic - Fulbright Research Scholarship to MPI fuer Kernphysik, Heidelberg, for extragalactic work; PhD position at New Mexico St c 2021 Melanie Dieterlen - PhD position, U. Pittsburgh 2023 Thomas Hulse - PhD position at Rice; Lori Porter - PhD position at Columbia 2023 Dr. Camella Nasr (PhD 2023), joined Orion Space Solutions 2025 Brady Smith - Fulbright Research Scholarship to Hamburg, Germany; Madison Sherouse - PhD position at U Minnesota; Tashiana Walker, MA, Lehigh (computational psychology)