Fostering future careers in STEM through the CERN openlab Summer Student Programme

CERN openlab’s collaboration with leading technology companies, including NVIDIA, Oracle, Siemens, and Micron, sponsors a nine-week summer student programme to motivate young and bright minds to join the research community and get hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies guided by world-leading experts.

Over 20 joint R&D projects are being carried out at CERN through CERN openlab’s industry collaborations. This programme is open to everyone, including non-member state applicants, fostering a broader inclusive environment where everyone can apply and experience the cutting-edge environment of doing R&D at CERN.

This year, CERN openlab partnered with the Swiss chapter of the Women in HPC, an advocacy group called ideas4HPC co-founded by Maria Girone, head of CERN openlab. Ideas4HPC aims to promote inclusivity and diversity in HPC by creating targeted scholarships to support participation in top conferences or running training sessions for mentors. This programme specifically supported a summer student to promote more women in STEM spaces.

The summer student programme allows students to work with leading experts, establish ties to industry and gain new skills. ‘Through CERN openlab, young students have the opportunity to work in a multidisciplinary cutting-edge environment with talented researchers that have a variety of different skills to share with them. Furthermore, engaging with the private sector exposes these students to frontier technologies, preparing them for promising future careers,’ says Maria Girone, head of the CERN openlab.

Thirty students from 21 nationalities, out of over 6660 applicants, representing the universities below, were selected to work on quantum computing, machine learning, and other ICT projects. Last week, students presented brief overviews of their projects in a five-minute ‘lightning talks’ series explaining the challenges, problems and solutions they found.

Education and training are fundamental to the CERN openlab mission, which promotes open science and encourages innovation and creative thinking. ‘It was inspiring to see students present the results of the work they have been doing for the past few weeks. I hope they found this opportunity as valuable as it was for us to have them here. It is an enriching exchange of experiences and knowledge for all of us,’ says Antonio Nappi, CERN openlab CTO for Platforms and Workflows.

Applications for the 2025 CERN openlab Summer Student programme will open in November 2024.