National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): Summer High School Intern Program (SHIP)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology offers unique research experiences that can set you apart from your college-bound peers. Students work with staff in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, materials science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, information technology, and computer science. Science at NIST focuses on measurement and advanced technology.

Students interested in science can spend their summers in our labs at the Boulder, CO, or the Gaithersburg, MD, campuses through NIST’s Summer High School Intern Program (SHIP). Students learn from top scientists at NIST and work on their own research projects. Students MUST live near the NIST Boulder, CO, or NIST Gaithersburg, MD lab. If Students are from out-of-state, they MUST have their own housing and transportation set up in order to participate in the program.

NIST research is subdivided into six organizational NIST laboratories that conduct research in a wide variety of physical and engineering sciences. The labs respond to industry needs for measurement methods, tools, data, and technology. Six laboratories participate in the SHIP program.

Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL)

Engineering Laboratory (EL)

Information Technology Laboratory (ITL)

Material Measurement Laboratory (MML)

NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR)

Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML)

Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of NIST's research, we encourage students to look through the different websites above to discover lots of interesting project areas. The following information describes the types of research performed by each laboratory.