This summer, I had the chance to tour the National Ignition Facility and learn about the amazing work that went into the Lab's historic ignition shot. As part of DSSI, I work with a group of interns to develop and present a data-driven approach to reconstructing electro-anatomical maps of the heart. My main focus is developing, implementing, and testing deep learning computer vision models.
—Jocelyn Ornelas Muñoz, DSSI class of 2023
What is the Data Science Summer Institute?
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is offering data science graduate students and advanced undergraduate students like you the opportunity to join the Data Science Summer Institute (DSSI). Our interns get to work on real problems that really matter to our country.
This is a flexible summer internship program that runs for 12 weeks. As a DSSI intern, you'll apply your ideas, passion, and the skills you've acquired in machine learning, statistics, and high-performance computing to projects in areas of national importance.
The Lab's next generation of science and engineering advancements are being applied to achieve breakthroughs for counterterrorism and nonproliferation, defense and intelligence, and energy and environmental security. Our summer program brings in a limited number of undergraduate and graduate students with backgrounds in machine learning, applied mathematics, computer science, statistics, or related fields to work with some of the best minds in data science, tackling some of the world's largest problems.
At the beginning of your internship, you'll be paired with one of our mentors—LLNL staff scientists and engineers who are recognized experts in their fields. Your mentor will develop a purposed research project for you that will be significant, yet manageable within the length of the DSSI program. Some of these projects will be designed to lead to follow-on work for students who would like to return in subsequent years. Check out some of the students' past projects.
High-performance computing has been a central strength of the Lab, as it's vital to mission success and a source for scientific discovery and technological innovation. LLNL is home to some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, like Sierra, which has a CPU-GPU architecture and a peak performance of 125 petaFLOPs per second. Many of our machines are well suited to solving big data problems, such as those found in the areas of bioinformatics, graph networks, machine learning, and natural language processing. Learn more about how HPC systems are used in data science projects at the Lab.
In addition to individual project work with your mentor, you'll participate in DSSI seminars and short courses.
You'll participate in the DSSI Challenge Problems, where teams of students will work together to develop and present a system of solving hard problems relevant to the Lab's mission. You'll also have opportunities to tour (virtually) some of LLNL's unique facilities, such as the National Ignition Facility, the Livermore Computing Complex, and the Additive Manufacturing Laboratory.
At the end of your internship, you'll participate in the Lab's Summer Slam where you present your work to DSSI leadership, mentors, and other students.
Ready for the next step?
Visit the projects and mentors page to learn more about students' real-world data science challenges and the mentors they work with. Visit our applications page to read FAQ about the program, apply to the job posting, or contact us for more information. Join the LLNL Scholars Google Group to chat with mentors and other students.