Undergraduate research and placement internships Neil Gordon Department of Computer Science QERLI 2016 Developing Relationships In and Between Areas Thursday, 12 May UK City of Culture k

What / whoWhy / how In 2014 we introduced two month long paid summer internships for current undergraduates A range of topics/projects e.g. – Apps and Augmented Reality; 3D Printing; Robotics Control; Raspberry Pi and other “Internet of Things” devices; 3D Immersive reality and graphics software experiments; MOOC infrastructure. Many projects with other areas on campus To encourage undergrads to consider a path on to research Led by HoD – with support from other academics in dept. To engage – and retain – high achieving students: especially for PhDs, and To support initial research ideas Current undergraduates – at any stage – could apply for the places Involved academic supervisors working in pairs

Where / WhenImpact Current Hull CS undergraduates: a range of students at 1st year, 2nd year and finalists’ level participated Supported by our systems team, with allocated space in our research labs Enabled students to interact with current research students and utilise research facilities Interns have acted as ambassadors, with science fair, prestigious visits as well as other departmental outreach A number of the interns now studying for PhD with us Challenges: funding of future placements. Capacity (space and staffing) to supervise

Departmental Internships / in-course placements Internships – Year long placements in SEED software, and recently in HIVE as well as other campus locations – Paid “training” positions: significant number of students apply – Accounts for majority of our “industrial experience” students. In-course placements – MEng degree programmes introduced in Included 40 credits “industrial experience” in 4 th year – Has proved increasingly popular – MSc in Computer Science introduced with option to do a dissertation OR a portfolio activity working in SEED software – For C16 – have introduced a new additional “trimester” of placement as an additional option on ALL our MSc programmes Challenges: Funding; students not applying for off-campus internships sufficiently early (over-reliance on our own); Ensuring industrial context to our own placements