Summer Internship Opportunities for PhDs

Sponsored internship opportunities play a crucial role in BU PhD students’ career and professional development, refining not only their discipline-specific technical skills and research acumen but also imparting invaluable practical knowledge. Beyond honing these technical skills, students will gain firsthand insight into the intricacies of workplace dynamics, providing opportunities to build skills that they may not develop in their traditional PhD training.

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Boston University PhD Internships

PDPA offers three internships for BU PhD students in local organizations with the support of an NSF Innovations in Graduate Education grant as well as the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center. We are pleased to announce 2024 internships with three companies: Lightcast and two BTEC member companies, Novartis BioMedical Research and Draper. 

The Office of the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GRS), and the BU Center for the Humanities, and the Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS) offer summer stipend support for six humanities PhD students and five social science PhD students annually. Interns undertake substantive research and writing in Boston-area cultural, governmental, and other organizations, with the aim of exposing PhD students to possible career opportunities outside of higher education.

Additional internship or experiential learning opportunities are available through the BU URBAN Program (Urban Biogeoscience & Environmental Health), which is open to students in Biology, Earth & Environment, Environmental Health, and Statistics. The Activist Lab at the School of Public Health and the BU Initiative on Cities both offer experiential learning fellowships that are similar to other internship programs.

All BU – supported summer interns participate in the Summer PhD Internship Cohort. The Cohort is designed to create a supportive community for summer PhD interns, as well as provide an opportunity to outline and identify goals and expectations for PhD students related to skill building and career development during their internships. Interns will take badges in the PhD Internship Preparation Pathway and will meet regularly over the course of the summer.

Additional Summer Funding Opportunities

For PhD students in GRS who find their own, unpaid internship opportunities, applications are now open via InfoReady for the Graduate Internship Funding Program.

To learn more, visit the GRS website.