BELL Summer Internship Program

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  The application for the 2024 BELL Summer Internship Program is close !

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Description of the Program 

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The goal of the Berkeley Early Learning Lab's summer internship is to provide a hands-on research experience to students interested in pursuing graduate work in cognitive and language development or a related field. Interns will be paired with a graduate student or postdoc mentor and will have the opportunity to conduct research at local children’s museums and in the lab, and collaborate on a variety of on-going and new projects. Our lab uses looking time, eye tracking, free play, and other behavioral methods to investigate many aspects of cognitive and language development, including probabilistic and  statistical learning mechanisms, compositionality in language and other domains, reasoning about objects and agents,  word learning, and social cognition.
 
In addition to collaboration with individual graduate students and work on specific projects, weekly lab meetings will give interns a chance to present their own work for feedback and provide feedback to others. Interns will work closely with the lab manager, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and each other, and will meet with Professor Xu to discuss their research. Research experience: (1) Interns will be involved in many facets of the research process, such as: assisting with data collection, working on stimuli creation and preparation of study materials, reading relevant theoretical and empirical papers, recruiting participants, testing participants, and processing or analyzing data. There will be weekly reading groups and lab meetings, as well as a professional development series for those interested in careers in psychology. (2) We may also have a series of workshops/tutorials on several useful technical tools for developmental research, e.g., R (statistics), LookIt (an online testing platform), basic animation techniques in PowerPoint, basic animation techniques in Blender, and Datavyu (a video coding software package).  
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This is an 8 week internship program that requires 15-25 hours of work per week. The program runs from Monday, June 3 – Friday, July 26,  2024 and will be in person in Berkeley or remote. Please note that we are unable to provide housing in the Bay Area, but we will have an option to work remotely if needed.  We recommend that applicants apply for outside funding, as this internship is unpaid. 

Lastly, accepted interns will have to pass a background check with fingerprinting as this role involves working with minors.
 

 

Eligibility

Berkeley affiliated and non-Berkeley undergraduates who are interested in developmental psychology and cognitive science are welcome to apply to our Summer Internship Program. Applicants should have some course work in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, basic computer skills (programming skills are highly desirable), and experience working with children. 

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Commitments

This internship requires a commitment of 15-25 hours/week for 8 weeks. We will allow a late start for students who are enrolled in a quarter system that ends later than May 31st. Missing part of the internship due to personal vacations is not permissible. le. 

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Application Requirements

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You will need to submit the following materials in the above application: 

- Resume/Curriculum Vitae

- Cover Letter 

- Discuss any research experience, experience working with children, or programming experience. Also please discuss why you think the Berkeley Early Learning Lab would be a great fit for you. (Less than 5,000 characters including spaces.)

- Unofficial Transcript

- One Letter of Recommendation

- Letters of recommendation should be sent to the lab manager, Tina Tang, at babylab@berkeley.edu. Letters of recommendation should be sent directly from the recommender as a PDF and should include the applicant's name in the title of the attached document.

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Please complete the application on our website through the "Application Form" link and submit all materials by February 29th, 2024 at 11:59pm PST. Decisions will be made by the end of March.
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If you have any questions about the application, please direct your questions to the lab manager, Tina Tang, at babylab@berkeley.edu.

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Summer Internship FAQ

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Does the Summer Internship offer a stipend?

We are only hiring volunteers and there will not be a stipend offered. 

 

Is your program open to International Students? 

Yes, our internship is open to undergraduate international students.  

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Can a college graduate apply to the program?

Unfortunately, we only accept current undergraduate students and seniors graduating in May 2024. However, priority will be given to more junior college applicants.   

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Do you need to have research experience to apply?

We do not require applicants to have previous research experience. We are more interested in learning about your research interests and whether they align well with our program.

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Can I have a part-time job or take summer classes while in the internship?

Yes, many of our interns have had part-time jobs or taken summer classes while in the internship. However, you must still be able to commit 15-25 hours a week to the internship and have availability mostly during 9am-5pm on weekdays and weekends. nds.