UG Summer Placement 2025 - UCL

Learn more about Advanced Research Computing at UCL here.

Project Overview

Emerging technologies in life sciences, particularly in genomics and imaging research, generate vast and complex datasets. However, effective support and training required to analyse these data are not always available. To address this, we must promote computational research technical professional (RTP) career pathways, equip students with essential skills for pursuing these roles, and encourage collaboration among biologists, computer scientists, and software developers.

This placement provides an exciting opportunity for students passionate about computational research to contribute to a project within a Data Science team spanning UCL’s Advanced Research Computing (ARC) department and the Division of Biosciences. Collaborating with the Senior Research Data Scientist RTP, the intern will help develop software to automate and optimise segmentation, a key step in the image analysis workflow common across biological research. This includes implementing and optimising methods such as grey-value thresholding, and watershed or adaptive segmentation to improve analytical accuracy.

Technical Skills: Training will be provided in critical data science and software development methodologies, such as coding using Python, data management, bioinformatics/image analysis, machine learning/AI techniques, writing technical documentation, and sharing findings with other scientists.

Learning Objectives

The successful applicant will collaborate with imaging researchers to identify a key challenge or bottleneck in the segmentation step of an image analysis pipeline that could feasibly be addressed during the internship. By the end of the project they will have experience of:

• Developing software to perform and validate segmentation, including use of machine learning techniques where appropriate.
• Presenting at regular meetings with software developers and software users to ensure the software produced is robust and user-friendly.
• Delivering functional, user-friendly, well-documented software to meet needs identified at the start of the internship.
• Project Management: Hands-on experience with managing timelines, milestones, and deliverables in a research project setting.
• Problem solving: They will gain experience in solving the challenges that occur across the course of a project, including searching for solutions online, raising concise queries and finding the appropriate colleague to approach according to the context.

We will encourage the successful applicant to share their experience at subsequent events (e.g. careers events) to further raise the profile of RTP career opportunities – note, we would offer full support for any presentation after the internship has finished.