STEM-savvy Year 12 students can spend their next school holidays interning at QUT and tackling issues such as interstellar travel, monitoring the Great Barrier Reef, hospital superbugs, the genetics of migraines and mega-batteries to power our planet.
The free program will run from April 8 to 12, with closing on February 18.
Students take part in intensive workshops and research across a broad range of projects in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).
QUT’s STEM teacher-in-residence, Patricia Hosking, said it was just one of many the university held each year for school students to give them a taste of campus life and future career options.
“In 2018 more than 10,950 high school students, teachers and parents experienced STEM workshops and events at QUT,” she said.
“Our STEM internships for Year 12s are rigorous week-long experiences that develop their technical, leadership and critical thinking skills. They are treated like a real QUT student with access to our facilities, researchers and online resources.
“We find our interns are all highly motivated and it’s a great chance for them to work at a university level with like-minded peers.”
Hayley Simpson did a week-long STEM internship at QUT in 2017 while she was in Year 12 at Craigslea State High, where she was studying three sciences plus maths.
After gaining an OP3, she’s now in her second year of a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree and earned great grades in 2018.
Hayley said the Year 12 internship helped her decide what field she wanted to study, and also gave her a big insight into full-time work and time management.
“I studied three sciences at school and it gave me a chance to see where they could lead me, and gave me some experience of life after the classroom,” she said.
“It definitely made me manage my time better too because I had to catch the train into the city each day and pretend to be fulltime researcher!
“I’d really encourage other Year 12 students to apply for an internship … even if you don’t end up studying the area you intern in it still helps you focus your goals.
“My internship involved insect DNA but physics was my best area at school so I decided on civil engineering with a second major in structural engineering.”
Fifty internship placements are available in the free 2019 program.
This year’s projects are:
– Virtual Reef Diver
– Collision avoidance for unmanned aircraft (UAVs)
– Astrophysics (rocket science, space travel and exoplanet habitability)
– Siphon physics to prevent ‘inland tsunamis’
– Future environments (energy/battery fabrication, future mobility, next gen materials, chemical signatures)
– Migraine genomics
– Liver disease and iron disorders
– Multidrug resistant pathogens
