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Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) is designed to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) through a unique research experience that supports the NIST mission.

Capitol hill tour

SURF Fellows visit Capitol Hill each summer to interact with congressional representatives  primarily on STEM initiatives.  This picture was captured during the 2018 visit.

It is with great regret that we must cancel the SURF Program for the summer of 2020. To protect the health and safety of our researchers and associates, NIST has made adjustments to the operating procedures at our facilities and to our research schedules. Unfortunately, these changes make it infeasible for NIST to adequately prepare for and deliver the hands-on experience that is the hallmark of our SURF program.

We hope you and your family stay safe during this unprecedented time. Stay tune for info pertaining to future program announcements.

 

Welcome and thank you for your interest in SURF at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The SURF Program is designed to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) through a unique research experience that supports the NIST mission. Since 1993, SURF students from across the country have had the opportunity to gain valuable, hands-on experience, working with cutting edge technology in one of the world's leading research organizations and home to three Nobel Prize winners.

Over the course of 11 weeks, SURF students contribute to the ongoing research of one of the six NIST facilities which are the Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL), Engineering Laboratory (EL), Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), Material Measurement Laboratory (MML), NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR), and Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) (which now includes project in the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology).  The SURF Program is administered at the Boulder, CO and Gaithersburg, MD locations.  Applications are required to be submitted through USAJOBS.

Note:  Only U.S. citizens are eligible to participate in the SURF Program. 

Just a Standard Blog

female face against a black background littered with bits of computer code. The woman is wearing a hat and sunglasses. There is a string of code coming from her mouth that looks like a cigarette.

Cybercrime: It’s Worse Than We Thought

The cyber world is relatively new, and unlike other types of assets, cyber assets are potentially accessible to criminals in far-off locations. This distance
NIST physicist Elizabeth Donley and Compact Atomic Clock

Keeping Time at NIST

Einstein is reported to have once said that time is what a clock measures. Some say that what we experience as time is really our experience of the phenomenon

Upcoming Webinars

There are no additional webinars scheduled for this cycle. However, you can view a link to a recently recorded webinar at https://www.nist.gov/news-events/events/2020/01/nist-surf-webinar-2020.

Application Deadline

This opportunity will close on February 9, 2020 or when we have received the application limit associated with each NIST location which may be sooner than the closing date.