Summer Internship Opportunities
We are excited to share the below paid summer 2023 research internship opportunities! 
Galaxy geography with JWST
Supervisors: Pauline Barmby, Physics & Astronomy & Jinfei Wang, Geography
Galaxies include many different components – stars, gas, dust, planets and black holes among others – and disentangling these components is important for understanding their relationships within a galactic ‘ecosystem’. Our research collaboration has used machine learning to classify galaxy components and stellar age in Hubble Space Telescope images. This summer project involves extending our methods to new images from the James Webb Space Telescope and to a comparison between Hubble and JWST. Our goal is to learn how well image-analysis methods derived from geographic information systems research can identify the different components of galaxies.
Required qualifications: The intern needs to be comfortable with using computers to analyze numerical data, make graphs, and do calculations (eg, via coursework in statistics, data science, or other relevant areas). Familiarity with ArcGIS or QGIS would be an asset, as would familiarity with Python or R and their use in machine learning.
Deformation and strength study of reidite – strong or weak for an age dating phase?
Supervisor: Sean Shieh, Earth Sciences
Reidite is a high-pressure form of zircon (ZrSiO4) that is popular for age determination of terrestrial planets. Reidite can be found at impact sites or shocked meteorites but requires to be formed at high pressure and high temperature conditions. Furthermore, reidite was also reported to be stable at pressure greater than 7 GPa and high temperatures experimentally. However, recent shockwave study suggested the reidite synthesized pressure should be greater than 35 GPa. Since reidite is also regarded as a barometer, its appearance in the impact sites or meteorites can be used as an indicator for the peak pressure for impact events. Furthermore, the mechanical property such as strength of reidite plays an important role for the evolution of terrestrial planets. However, knowledge of the strength and deformation of the reidite is unclear. This project aims to exam the strength and deformation of reidite at high pressure and room temperature using lattice strain theory, together with viscoplastic self-consistent theory (VPSC) predictions.
Sensors for Muscle Health Monitoring in Space
Supervisors: Ana Luisa Trejos, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Adam Sirek, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
This project involves completing the engineering design of a wearable sensor system that can monitor the health of the musculoskeletal system of astronauts exposed to a reduced gravity environment.
Intern Required Qualifications: Undergraduate student in electrical, mechanical or mechatronics system engineering with preference given to students completing a dual degree in biomedical engineering.
High resolution thermal remote sensing for urban climate applications
Supervisor: James Voogt, Geography
This summer research internship will support research using high resolution thermal imagery for urban climate applications. Work will include: 1) developing methods to use multi-viewing angle thermal imagery collected from airborne or drone platforms to characterize the complete exterior temperature characteristics of buildings. These temperatures will then be used in combination with building energy models to assess building heat loss and energy demand, 2) working with high resolution thermal and lidar data to characterize the three-dimensional thermal structure of urban residential neighbourhoods, 3) using remote sensing and GIS methods to support identification of heat vulnerability in London.
Required Qualifications: Applicants should have some knowledge and experience with remote sensing and/or GIS software such as ArcGIS, QGIS, and the ability to work with numerical data sets and remotely sensed imagery. Knowledge of computer programming using Python, Matlab, RStudio or other programming languages would be considered an asset. The position should be suitable for students with academic backgrounds from Physical Geography, Geographic Information Science, Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering or related fields. Any academic course work or research experience related to urban climate or more generally microclimates, atmospheric science, remote sensing, climate adaptation, urban environments or landscape architecture would provide useful background.
Canadian UVIT telescope: Observing low-surface-brightness spiral galaxies
Supervisor: Dr. Pauline Barmby, Physics and Astronomy
Our team has used the Canadian UVIT telescope on the Indian Astrosat satellite to observe low-surface-brightness spiral galaxies. These ghostly galaxies are difficult to observe and even more difficult to understand: despite having plenty of interstellar gas, they are not converting this gas to stars; despite having few young stars, they have blue colours. Combining Astrosat images of the ultraviolet light emitted by these galaxies with data from other telescopes will help us to understand the current and past properties of these galaxies and others.
Required qualifications: Applicants should have some academic background in physics, astronomy, engineering, or computer science. Ideally they will have research or coursework experience with image analysis (eg in physics, astronomy, remote sensing, computer science or other fields) and be comfortable with using Python and Linux.
To Apply: Please email a coverletter and a resume to: Dr. Pauline Barmby | pbarmby@uwo.ca
