Are you an undergraduate or graduate student enrolled at a US-accredited College or University? Are you enthusiastic about software & programming and interested in applying your skills to exciting academic research problems? Then, the Princeton University Research Software Engineering Summer Fellows program could be for you. As a summer fellow, you will work under the mentorship of a professional Research Software Engineer (RSE) to build, develop, and optimize software used in cutting-edge Princeton research software projects.

The RSE Fellows Program lasts 10-12 weeks during the summer, depending on academic year schedules. The fellow is expected to be available full-time, not employed in any other activity (including graduate assistantships) or following significant coursework. Relocation to Princeton is not required. In most cases, fellows will remain in their home location and work remotely with their mentor. Summer fellows will receive a training stipend of $730/week, paid monthly, during the program, assuming satisfactory progress. As part of our program, funds are available for a one-week, on-campus visit, fully funded by Princeton University. It is optional, but we encourage taking advantage of this opportunity. During this time, you'll have the chance to interact with your mentor,  other RSEs, and students.

Prior knowledge of the research domain is helpful, but it isn't required. Dedicated training activities will be offered to help fellows improve specific software skills.

Eligibility: You must be enrolled as a student at an accredited University or College and have completed at least one academic year by the start of the summer fellowship. US citizenship is not required, but if you are in the US on a student visa, you must be eligible to participate in an optional practical training (OPT) activity.

Application: Interested students should apply via this Google Form. You will need to provide:

• Your full name, email address, your university or college name, and your current or planned major and/or area of study.
• A resume/CV (in pdf format) with contact information.
• An academic transcript - this can be unofficial but should include course titles and overall GPA. 
• A short essay describing your interest in the RSE fellows program (maximum 1 page, pdf format). For example, you may wish to expand on 3 or 4 topics from the following list: your background, skills, and strengths; what software, computing, or scientific topics appeal to you; previous research experience, if any; what you may want to pursue as a future career; and what benefits you would like to gain from this program. 
• [Optional] The full name and email address of a reference. Ideally, it would be someone with whom you have interacted in a STEM context (e.g., a course, previous research activity, or developing software). You should contact the person in advance to confirm that they will write a letter for you and simply provide their name/email in the application form. After you submit the form, we may contact them to request the letter.

Final Deadline and Selection Process: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025. 

Applications will be evaluated as they arrive, and selected applicants will be invited for a short interview. Based on the interview and this discussion, the applicant will write up and submit a 2-page proposal with a plan of work and timeline for the summer. This short proposal will be the basis for acceptance into the RSE summer fellows program.

Questions can be addressed to [email protected].

Mentor and Project for Summer 2025

This year, due to limited funding, we can only offer one project.

George Artavanis (ParFlow)

During this Fellowship, you will join the Maxwell group (CEE) and contribute to the development of ParFlow. ParFlow is an open-source, parallel simulation platform for hydrologic modeling. It simulates saturated and variably saturated subsurface flow in heterogeneous porous media in three spatial dimensions. The project involves developing the GPU (CUDA) backend of ParFlow and optimizing its performance. This is a unique opportunity for students with a CS/Engineering/Computational background to get involved in environmental modeling and scientific computing and contribute to developing a national water modeling platform. The project will result in public-facing GitHub contributions. There is also the opportunity to participate in the Princeton-NVIDIA hackathon with the ParFlow development team! Requires GPU programming experience, preferably with CUDA.