Human industries emit pollutants into our environment every day, yet we still don’t fully understand how introduced chemicals break down (or not), and what impacts they have on human water resources and the local ecosystems.
The mentor for this position conducts research on a wide range of chemical reactions that occur in the environment, especially those that contribute to the fate, effects, or remediation of pollutants - in other words, the chemical processes that are important to the health of the environment and living beings. This research is both fundamental (i.e., to better understand the biogeochemical processes that affect water and sediment quality) and practical (i.e., developing methods to avoid or clean-up contamination problems).
This year, the intern will assist in the mining and curation of data on pollutant degradation under various conditions, and/or performing laboratory experiments to characterize redox reactions between pollutants and environmental media (for example: groundwater, surface water, rain, and fog). By the end of the summer they will have a deeper understanding of the chemical reactions that happen in different environments, and what we can do to mitigate the impacts of pollution. To learn more about the mentor's work, visit his lab website.
This is a part-time in-person internship, with the expectation that the intern will work at least 200 hours over the course of the summer.
Students must be minimum age specified by June 15. These age requirements are strictly enforced by the mentoring organization, and there are no exceptions. Applicants should be aware that on-site parking may be limited and/or unavailable throughout the summer; interns may be required to rely on public transit or alternative transportation.
We strongly encourage students to apply who are from one or more systemically and historically excluded group, including but not limited to, non-cis-gendered students, girls, BIPOC, first-generation college bound students, low-income/low-resourced students, students with disabilities, who are neurodivergent, and those who speak a primary language other than English.
If you have any questions about the application, website technical issues and/or this position description, please contact Saturday Academy at ase@saturdayacademy.org. Do not contact the mentor directly. Contacting the mentor directly is grounds for disqualification of your ASE application