Internships at NASA

NASA internships and fellowships provide opportunities for high school students through postdocs. Check out the resource links below:

GeneLab Internship Opportunities

GeneLab for High Schools

GeneLab for High Schools (GL4HS) is a four-week, intensive, summer training program for rising high school juniors and seniors hosted by NASA’s Ames Research Center (Mountain View, CA). It provides students an opportunity to immerse themselves in Space Life Sciences with a specific focus on omics-based bioinformatics research, the science of collecting and analyzing complex biological data such as genetic codes and computational biology. The 2023 course will be held virtually due to the pandemic. GL4HS also provides training opportunities for teachers who are interested in incorporating the curriculum into their advanced biology courses. 

Interested? Apply Now

Application Deadline: February 4, 2024 by 5:00 pm (PT)

When:  July 1 – July 26, 2024 8:00 am – 3:00 pm (PT)

GeneLab for Universities and Colleges

GeneLab for Universities and Colleges (GL4U) is designed by NASA GeneLab in collaboration with the GeneLab Educational Working Group (EWG) to provide space biology-relevant training in bioinformatics to the next generation of scientists through direct and indirect approaches. The direct approach trains college-level students, and the indirect approach trains college educators (training of trainers). The GL4U team has hosted three annual data processing bootcamps for different types of omics data hosted on the GeneLab Data Repository. During the bootcamps, participants learned about space biology, experimental design, data generation and associated technology usage, and performed hands-on analysis of space-relevant omics data using GeneLab’s standard processing pipelines.

The GL4U: RNAseq bootcamp, has been run (virtually) with San Jose State University students in June 2021 and 2022. The contents of this bootcamp, including introductory command line and space biology-specific lectures, as well as hands-on instruction for processing RNAseq data via Jupyter Notebooks (JNs), have been uploaded to the GeneLab Training GitHub Repository along with installation instructions.

Bootcamp materials: RNAseq bootcamp

The GL4U: AmpliSeq bootcamp, took place on July 2023 at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). This course provided an overview of amplicon sequencing and hands-on processing of samples followed by analysis and visualization of the processed data using the GeneLab Amplicon Sequencing Data Processing Pipeline. All lecture materials have been uploaded to the GeneLab Training GitHub Repository.

Bootcamp materials: AmpliconSeq bootcamp

The Space Life Sciences Training Program at Ames Research Center

The Space Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP) provides undergraduate students entering their junior or senior years, and entering graduate students, with professional experience in space life science disciplines. This challenging ten-week summer program is hosted by NASA’s Ames Research Center in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. The primary goal of the program is to train the next generation of scientists and engineers, enabling NASA to meet future research and development challenges in the space life sciences.

Students in SLSTP undertake research projects in multiple areas, including:

• The effects of spaceflight on living systems, conducted both on the ground and also in space aboard the International Space Station and other spacecraft.
• The development and operation of specialized research facilities to support investigations in microgravity, partial gravity, and hypergravity.
• Research and development of advanced biotechnologies that enable NASA’s exploration of distant destinations.

Interested? Apply Now

Other internship opportunities at NASA:

• NASA STEM Engagement: NASA education opportunities
• NASA Postdoctoral Program: postdoctoral fellowships 
• NASA Taskbook database: identify funded Space Biology researchers at your institute or in your area of interest
• NASA Ames Research Center: civil servant or contractor employment opportunities
• NSPIRES: notifications of solicitations for funding for independent research (including as a postdoc)

	Stay connected with the NASA Open Science Data Repository: