To broaden and develop our teams’ collaborative skills while offering visiting students the chance to expand their scientific networks and gain cultural experiences, BRT encourages students to join our team for internship opportunities. These internships aim to facilitate idea exchange, foster professional growth, and create opportunities for collaboration.

Recently, we hosted two interns, Abby MacLean and Emma Jackson, students from the United States, currently pursuing bachelor’s degrees in mathematics/economics and evolutionary biology. Read their introductory blogs here : Abby & Emma.

Enjoy reading about their experience with BRT!

During our time at BRT, we were able to take part in many aspects of the work that BRT accomplishes. For example, we spent many hours in the lab completing different experiments. Within our first few weeks, we got to learn how to take measurements for two different biogas experiments in addition to setting one up from the beginning with Viktoriia. We also were able to help Viktoriia and Stacy begin a growing experiment to test the fertilizing properties of phosphogypsum. We are so grateful for the opportunities to learn and participate in actual experiments. We were also lucky enough to be able to attend the antelope handling at the university’s farm and partake in the sample preparation in the lab from the collected samples. 

Another major aspect of our work was with Stacy, Viktoriia, and Masha for BRT communications. We took part in creating videos and social media campaigns. For example, we created educational videos for the agri-policy and bioeconomy labs to promote this part of BRT’s work. We also created a social media campaign the 5th International Multidisciplinary Conference for Young Researchers (MCYR) that included information about sessions, abstract submissions, and workshop submissions to draw the public to apply and participate in this conference.

We also had the opportunity to collaborate with BRT PhD students on their research.  This included research about food security and the economic consequences and implications of biogas plants in the Global South.  It was such an enriching opportunity to get to work with BRT members on topics related to their research as we gained a better understanding of the research process in academia.  Additionally, the topics were very intriguing, and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to learn more about these disciplines.

Overall, we gained exposure to the academic research process in general.  This was very useful for us as we both are considering pursuing PhDs in our respective fields.  It was invaluable to learn more about what the day-to-day looks like for researchers and PhD students.  Also, we learned about the process and what it takes to get published.  We gained exposure to EU-funded projects.  It was very new to us to witness the collaboration from universities from many different countries work together on a common project and goal.  This experience gave us much appreciation for collaboration on research and provided us with a first-hand understanding of what it entails.

From Emma:

The experience I have gained at this internship is incredibly invaluable. It has been incredible to get to work directly in a lab with a few different kinds of experiments and gain practice with science dissemination. This work will help both in my applications towards a PhD, but also in the career in research, I hope to continue to a post-doc.

From Abby:

My internship experience at BRT will be very beneficial to my future career.  My goal is to pursue a PhD in Economics with a focus on the mathematical nature of economics.  The experience with data management that I gained while here has solidified my interest in the field.  My time at BRT has made me more confident that I want to pursue a PhD as I enjoyed being exposed to research executed by the team.  I was also able to improve my scientific background and understanding which has increased my interest in interdisciplinary research.

We are so grateful to everyone at BRT for welcoming us this summer!  We will never forget our experience here, which will be invaluable towards our future careers.  We also feel so lucky to have spent the past two months in Prague, it is an amazing city with so much to offer!

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