Blog: Next Generation Data Science Paid Summer Vacation Internships at University of Liverpool
Are you an undergraduate student looking for a paid internship this summer, with an interest in data science? Are you an undergraduate student considering applying for a PhD? Do you want to find out what it’s like to work with industrial partners and a large team of academics, Post Docs and PhDs, to give you a flavour of life as an academic researcher?
The Centre for Doctoral Training in Distributed Algorithms, within the Signal Processing Research Group, has four innovative and stimulating data science paid internships for the summer 2021 period, covering topics such as Bayes’ Theorem, Machine Learning, MCMC and SMC Algorithms, Stone Soup and the Python framework.
We’re looking for undergraduate students in the penultimate year of their degree studies to come and gain a taster of what it is like to do research within a creative and multi-disciplinary research team and work alongside PDRA, PhD students, academics, industry and government.
Each EPSRC summer internship student will be supervised by researchers working with partners including but not limited to IBM Research, STFC Hartree Centre, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Stan, Liverpool Telescope (LJMU) and the North-West space hub.
You will gain practical first-hand experience of working on and carrying out research in a UK university with the aforementioned partners, that will be used to solve challenging data science problems.
If you are successful you will be employed as a paid intern and will receive a minimum payment rate equivalent to the National Living Wage for approximately ten weeks. Furthermore, if you’re considering applying for a PhD, this experience will give you a taste of what a PhD would be like and the skills needed to springboard you on to the Distributed Algorithms CDT PhD Programme – see our website for more details. Come and discover what it’s like to work as a ‘next generation data scientist’ harnessing the power of future computing!
Working as a summer intern proved to be a pivotal point in my career as a researcher. It was a unique opportunity to experience first-hand a professional research environment and helped me develop invaluable skills in the process. Even more importantly, once my internship finished, I was offered the PhD studentship that enabled me to pursue a PhD in the field that I loved and paved the way for my current position as a PDRA.
Dr Lyudmil Vladimirov, former intern, current postdoc researcher and intern supervisor
Vacation Internships at the Distributed Algorithms CDT – Project Summaries
Project Title: Creating a generalised database of Bayesian models [Ref 8]
This project is concerned around Bayes’ theorem and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. The internship project will aim to remedy this problem by generating a large database of curated Bayesian models. The main task will be to describe and categorise these models using the information found in the original sources. This project will be supervised by Phil Clemson and Professor Simon Maskell.
Project Title: Integration and development of tracker parameter estimation algorithms in Stone Soup [Ref 9]
The development of Stone Soup is being led by the UK government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL). The proposed project will involve the enhancement of the recently developed PMCMC software (as developed in Big Hypotheses) to be applicable with Stone Soup as well as subsequent integration of PMCMC and Stone Soup. The project will be supervised by Lyudmil Vladimirov and Professor Simon Maskell.
Project Title: Assessing light curves of Earth-Orbiting objects [Ref 10]
We are looking for a summer intern to build a processing chain (ideally written in Python) to analyse light detected from Earth-orbiting objects. Working with Dstl and the Liverpool Telescope, (of which future upgrades are part of the Liverpool City Region’s Data strategy with involvement, more broadly, with the North-West space hub), the project will be supervised by Dr Lee Devlin and Dr Stefania Soldini.
Project Title: Identifying Problems through Natural Language Processing [Ref 11]
The successful student will apply natural language processing (NLP) techniques to academic literature to identify the types of inference problems (static, online, dynamic) that MCMC algorithms are commonly applied to in a number of domains. As part of the “Big Hypotheses” research project, the University of Liverpool, in collaboration with IBM Research and the STFC Hartree Centre, has developed alternatives to MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) Samplers) which are capable of exploiting multi-core and multi-processor computing architectures. The project will be supervised by Postgraduate Researchers Matthew Carter, Phillip Marshall and Professor Simon Maskell.
As part of this internship, you will have the opportunity to work with real data collected from the Liverpool Telescope collected in ongoing and previous projects to improve our capability to understand what is orbiting above us. You will have the chance to learn what it is like to be a researcher in an academic environment and will be part of a team that span varying degrees of experience, from those who recently made the jump from undergraduate to PhD, to seasoned researchers.
Dr Lee Devlin, current postdoc researcher and intern supervisor
How to apply for our Data Science Summer Internships
To find out more and apply for one of our Summer Internships, the link below has full projects details (reference 8-11), eligibility and an application form.
Apply for the Summer Internships here.
Interested in a Data Science, Machine Learning, AI PhD? the Distributed Algorithms CDT has opportunities available
Where should you go following your UG degree, Masters or PhD? The vision of the Distributed Algorithms CDT is to help train the next generation of data scientists. We recruit a cohort of 15 fully-funded PhD students each year to work with industry. Visit our website for more information and to discover how to apply for a PhD. You can also find out what PhD projects our current students are working on as well as seeing our full list of partners. If you have any further queries, or would like to discover more about the Distributed Algorithms CDT, please email Kelli Cassidy, Centre Manager.
“Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.” Alan Turing