SHIP (Summer High School Intern Program) is a seven-week research internship for high school students at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Interns work on their own research projects with NIST scientists and engineers at the Gaithersburg, Maryland or Boulder, Colorado campus, in areas such as engineering, information technology and material and physical measurement, and present at a poster session at the end. The program runs each year from mid-June to early August; in 2026 it ran June 22 to August 7.
NIST calls SHIP a competitive volunteer program and does not publish applicant numbers or an acceptance rate. The internship is unpaid and provides no housing or transportation. Applicants must be US citizens in 11th or 12th grade with an unweighted GPA of at least 3.0 and a permanent residence within 50 miles of the host campus. Applications go through the federal hiring site USAJobs; for 2027 they are expected to open in mid-October 2026 and close at the end of January 2027.
SHIP is not open to Irvine students. Irvine students who want to do research in a government lab can look at Navy SEAP or AFRL Scholars in this library, checking each program’s citizenship and age requirements first.
