ICG offers a variety of research experience placements aimed at providing experience of working as an academic research scientist to students ranging in age from Year 10 to final year undergraduates.
Applications are now open for all of our schemes, with deadlines for applications across the next two months (11th March for the Nuffield Scheme for Y12 students; 13th March for the Ogden Trust Scheme open to Ogden Alumni; 31st March for SEPnet and internally funded undergraduate research placements, and finally 29th April for our Y10 work experience week). For more details on eligibility or how to apply for any of these scheme please visit our research experience placements page.
To give an idea of the kind of experience you will have, here is a summary of the placements we hosted during the summer of 2015.
Students (front) and supervisors at the 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Placement Symposium.
SEPnet and Internal Undergraduate Placements
- Anna Laws (Southampton University) worked with ICG postdoc, Kyle Westfall on a project given the title of “The power spectrum of non-circular motions in disc galaxies“. Anna used data from the SDSS project MaNGA to investigate the dynamics of nearby galaxies. Anna won one of the six poster prizes at the student expo, and she and Kyle are still working on a publication from this work. When asked to describer her placement, Anna said “It was a good experience working in a research department at a University as I was able to get a good idea what it’s like to be a researcher”.
- Steve Cunnington (Southampton Uni) who worked with ICG postdoc, Thomas Collett on a project, “Using gravitational lenses to measure the expansion of the Universe”. A very advanced draft of a paper based on this project exists. Steve told us, “I knew very little about astronomy before I started the project, but my time at ICG has given be the confidence to pursue further study in cosmology”.
- Sarunas Verner (Southampton Uni) worked with ICG postdoc, Jeremy Sakstein on “Disformal Gravity Theories: A Jordan Frame Analysis”, and their paper based on this work was published in the Physical Review D.
Ogden Placements
- Alex Todd (now in his 1st year Physical Science in Bath), worked with Karen Masters on “Quantifying the Effect of Image Depth on Morphological Classification of Galaxies”
- Peter Thomas (now in his 2nd year Physics at Lancaster Uni) worked with Matt Hull and Jeremy Sakstein on “Cosmology in alternate theories of gravity”
- Robert Vallance (now in his final year of Physics at Manchester) worked with Thomas Tram and Vincent Venin on “Testing Inflation in the Early Universe“
- Taniya Parikh (who is now in her first year of a PhD with Daniel Thomas in the ICG) worked with Kyle Westfall and Daniel Thomas on “The internal motions of galaxies”.
Nuffield Placement
Joe Hind who is now in his final year at South Downs College worked with ICG PhD student, Tom Melvin, and his supervisor Dr. Karen Masters on a project looking into how visual morphologies in Galaxy Zoo depend on the filter of the image they’re taken in.
Schools (Y10) Work Experience Week
Finally, five young people from schools all over the Portsmouth area spent a week in the department in late June, working on projects which varied from calculating the motion of projectiles in different gravity models, to investigating the cosmic microwave background, or measuring the population of stars in a cluster.
Schools work experience participants and supervisors.
We hope you will consider applying for one of these schemes and spending some time with us this summer.
We welcome applications from all qualified applicants, but applications are particularly encouraged from traditionally under-represented groups in science. The University of Portsmouth holds an Athena SWAN bronze award and is an Institute of Physics Project Juno Supporter; these projects show a commitment to introduce organisational and cultural practices that promote gender equality in science and create a better working environment for men and women.
