The Summer Student Programme gives undergraduate students of physics, engineering and computer science the unique possibility to join CERN for 8-13 weeks. It gives the students not only the chance to work on an exciting project, the students can also attend first-class lectures, workshops and can experience working in a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment.

In the HR Team we are three: Sharon Hobson, who had been coordinating the Programme for the last years handed over the coordination to Jennifer Dembski this year, and María José Morales Bazán who has been supporting the HR-TA team during the past year as an Administrative Student.

For us the Summer Student Programme begins already in October with the publication of the vacancy notice and ends when the last students leave at the end of the following September – so it’s a year-round Programme. Applications are considered and validated from October to the application deadline, usually at the end of January. We have to assess around 1500 applications, and that’s only for the Member State programme.

From the left: María José Morales Bazán, Sharon Hobson, Natalia Trajdos, Jennifer Dembski

The selections are made in March by the supervisors and the lucky students are informed in April. Contracts are sent in May and the first ones start arriving in June. On each of the 5 arrival dates the Summer Student team meets and greets the students for an induction session and explains practical information and how the students can make most out of their stay. Whilst the students are here we offer visits to the CERN facilities, small hands on workshops and coordinate the 6 week lecture programme that has been prepared in advance by the summer student lecture committee. We organize a welcome drink so that the students can meet each other. A Poster session and student sessions (where the students give their own lectures about their assigned project) are organized as a good educational exercise for the students wishing to participate. A success was also the Webfest where the students met over a weekend to “build cool science projects using open Web technologies”. Each year the students organize their own T-shirt design and other social events.

All in all we are here to help the students have a fruitful summer and get the most out of their time at CERN. It is a great pleasure for us to see how the students develop over those months and to hear that it was “the most motivating, informative, satisfactory and dream-like experience I’ve ever had”.

We would like to thank our colleagues who helped us during the selection process, the workshop organizers, the lecture committee and the lecturers, the Visit Service team and guides, the CERN Foyer and everyone else who has been involved in the programme and helped the students to have a “life changing experience”. We would like to give a special thank you to Sharon, who was taking care of the summer students for the last 5 years and with whom it was a great pleasure to work with and to learn from!

We wish our students all the best for their future and look forward to seeing some of them back here at CERN!