Digital Research Ambassadors

Digital Research Ambassadors is a fully funded internship scheme benefiting postgraduate research students and staff across the University. It is developed and supported by Digital Research Services and has been running since 2019.

Interns - postgraduate students with strong data and computing skills - are matched with host projects across the University. They will bring in digital research expertise and gain hands-on interdisciplinary research experience.

Hosts - research or professional staff across the University - propose a project and will receive support from the intern. They will gain new perspectives and hands-on support in using digital tools and services, develop additional dimensions to digital research planning and inspire a new generation of researchers.

If you are a research staff and you are interested in having a PGR Intern to work on your research project, register your interest for the next cohort of the DRS Ambassadors Internship Scheme.

If you are a PGR with strong digital skills and you are interested in participating in a research project at the University, register your interest.

The intern works 7-9 hours per week for a maximum of 12 weeks. This means the internship can run alongside their studies. The pay grade is UE05.

The internship usually runs from April/May up to 31st July of any academic year, subject to funding.

No financial contribution is expected from the host.

Selection process & Timeline

October / 06th of January - Hosts are invited to submit their applications.

January - Selection of hosts and corresponding research projects.

21st January - Job advert for interns circulated across the wider University.

March - Prospective interns are interviewed.

April / May - Start of the Ambassadors internship.

July - End of Ambassador Internship

October - Ambassador's event to celebrate interns' achievements.

Still got questions?

Have a look at the FAQs on the Ambassador Internship scheme or get in touch with one of our Research Facilitators.

"A very positive experience. The programme brought benefits for both the host (e.g. an admin-light means to recruit a summer intern, opportunity to work together on a joint research project, identify a PhD student for future opportunities) and the intern (e.g. paid employment in an interesting field, develop new research skills and interests outside of their PhD focus, great addition to the CV for future employability/reference)."

Dr Kevin Guyan, Chancellor's Fellow, Business School

"Excellent programme with the aim of linking PGR skills with areas of need."

Dr James Cumby, Senior Lecturer, School of Chemistry

"This is an excellent scheme. For those of us in the University (presumably a majority) without technical coding fluency, the scheme enables us to get new projects and new research off the ground that would otherwise – due to time and financial constraints – never happen. Our team intends to apply for further funding, including external funding, based on the pilot project we were able to run as part of this ambassadorship. From this perspective, the scheme should offer excellent return on investment for the University."

Dr Huw Halstead, Lecturer in Public History, History

"This was an excellent, well-organised and valuable program. The on-boarding of the DRS Interns was very smooth, and allowed interns to get up to speed quickly with the program requirements. It was great that this, and almost all of the admin was taken care of by the DRS team and so both host and intern were free to focus from the outset on the core project. It is a really excellent and rare opportunity for short-term knowledge exchange between students and academics. The guidance and resulting projects were very focused and allowed meaningful progress and outputs to be produced in the available time."

Dr Zak Campbell-Lochrie, Lecturer in Fire Science, Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, School of Engineering

"I had a great experience!"

Dr April Bailey, Lecturer in Psychology, Psychology

“Sarah is great by the way and the three of us working on technical stuff have gelled from day 1 - this is a great program!”

Dr Giorgos Papageorgiou, PDRA in Seismic Rock Physics, School of Geosciences

“What better way to gain work experience than in your home university? See what people are up to while you study, and learn about the importance of every role behind the scenes of the university. This role has given me the confidence to start my career once I graduate, and provided the hands-on experience I was looking to gain to embark into my future.”

2024 DRS Ambassador

“We have learnt much from [our intern's] knowledge and detailed review so far, which is also helpful for the new European project we are planning to submit this year which has a much larger ML database component.”

Prof. Jin Ooi, Chair of Particulate Solid Mechanics, Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, School of Engineering

"It was an absolute pleasure to be a host for the Digital Ambassadors Internship Scheme. The intern (...) created a sophisticated R Shiny app for my project and I have included the app in a grant application (Big Ideas Accelerator, 2023). The app currently allows users to upload data and to run a univariate area interaction point process model on the data. A link to a tutorial on point pattern data is also provided on the app. If our grant application is successful, we will include the facility to run bivariate point process models as well. During the project [our intern] was self-motivated, was highly organised and delivered a great product."

Dr. Glenna Nightingale, Chancellor's Fellow, Nursing Studies, School of Health in Social Sciences

“This was my first [interdisciplinary] internship (...), and it provides me a valuable opportunity to apply my data analysing skills in industry and allows me to work with colleagues from different backgrounds.”

Tianyi Yang, DRS Ambassador 2022