Welcome Event for IWF Summer Interns
On August 19, 2025, we had the pleasure of welcoming this year’s summer interns to a joint welcome event. Before the participants briefly presented their own projects, icebreaker games helped create a relaxed atmosphere. The event was rounded off with an introduction to the various research groups at the IWF. Energized by ice cream and full of new ideas, our interns were then able to enjoy an exclusive look into the IWF Astrolab at the end of the day.
Exactly one year later, on August 19, 2026, the second welcome event took place. Once again, we kicked things off with an interactive round of introductions—including the crucial question of everyone's favorite dinosaur. Afterward, the ten pupils and students gained exciting insights into the work of the IWF research groups. During the subsequent guided tours, the young researchers explored the vacuum laboratory and learned about the work of our Magnetometer Group. Over ice cream at the end of the event, there was plenty of opportunity to reflect on the day's experiences and share ideas.
We plan such a welcome event also for summer 2027.
Past Summer Internships
In 2023, the IWF was offering two summer internships for undergraduate students. The projects chosen in 2023 were "The habitability of nearby stellar systems: assembling a target list of stars that can host planets with Earth-like atmospheres" (supervisor: Dr. Manuel Scherf) and "Interplanetary Shocks and plasma turbulence Using Supercomputer Simulations" (supervisors: Dr. Luis Preisser and Dr. Cyril Laurent Simon-Wedlund).
Also in 2024, the IWF was offering two internships for undergraduate students. The projects chosen in 2024 are "Planetary atmospheres through time: evolution driven by atmospheric mass loss" (supervisor: Dr. Daria Kubyhkina) and "Ion trajectories simulation for the calibration of the PICAM instrument onboard ESA/BepiColombo mission" (supervisors: Dr. Gabriel Giono und Dr. Ali Varsani).
In the summer of 2025, four school pupils and students were able to complete an internship at the IMF. The six-week public outreach project "Bau und Programmierung eines PLATO-Modells" (supervisor: Dr. Manfred Steller) and the four-week IT project "Konfiguration und aktive Umsetzung eines Git/Wiki Systems zur Verwaltung der IT-Dokumentation und interner Software des Instituts" (supervisor: Mag. Wolfgang Voller) were successfully completed by two school pupils from Styria. The two 2-month projects "UV-driven chemistry in a shadowed protoplanetary disk" (supervisor: Dr. Sierk van Terwisga) and "Evaluating the Evolution of Systematic Noise in HST/STIS Exoplanet Transit Observations" (supervisor: Dr. Sreejith Aickara Gopinathan) lasted until October 2025.
The Summer Internships 2023 and 2024 were entirely, and 2025 and 2026 partly funded by the budget of the mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr.