Name of Student: Francis Steptoe
Job Title: Research Assistant
Job Summary:
I joined an innovative team working to develop some exciting research in the field of exoplanets. This involved programming, handling large datasets, data analysis and communication/interpretation of results. I regularly met with the wider research team to discuss my approach and was given a good level of independence for this.
What was your biggest achievement on your internship?
Biggest Achievement has to be the delivery of some plots and figures to a suitable standard to warrant a co-author credit on an academic paper. This will massively boost my cv for this area of research.
Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?
One of the challenges was the short timeframe to get onboarded into the team structure. The largest hurdle was handling code written by another student, resulting in some mistakes.
Would you recommend this internship scheme to other students?
Yes, I would recommend the scheme to other students.
My A2I experience greatly elevated my research output. It meant that I was able to experience work as an academic to produce significant data and results in my sector. Additionally the support of the A2I team provided a significant boost to my confidence in the workplace. I definitely recommend the service to anyone who wants to push further but doesn’t have a network to sustain this.
If you would like to find out more about the A2i scheme, you can contact the team via a2i@exeter.ac.uk, or you can also visit the student and employer facing webpages here.