I hope this
message finds you well! We are writing to you
from ICTP Physics Without Frontiers Bangladesh
to ask if you would be interested in an
initiative that is now in its second year.
In Bangladesh we
find ourselves with a lot of extremely talented
and motivated students who would benefit from
mentorship and the opportunity to work on
advanced topics. Last year we started the ICTP
PWF Bangladesh Internship Program: the
idea is to match advanced undergraduate or
Masters students to mentors living abroad and
connected to the scientific community (e.g. you 😊 ) who
supervised them in a small project over the
summer. Last year was a great success, with ~45
students successfully completing projects with
mentors all across the world.
The project can
vary in scope and difficulty depending on the
interests of the student and supervisor: it can
be entirely a reading project, or perhaps doing
numerical simulations of a system of interest,
or perhaps even doing a novel theoretical
calculation of interest. If things go very well
they might lead to original research and maybe a
publication; but we actually expect that most
projects will not end in this, but rather in
creating motivation for the student, giving them
a concrete goal and some research experience,
and building connections to actively practicing
scientists.
From the side of
the mentor, we would hope for an online meeting
roughly every two weeks (or every week if you
like) to help guide the student, for a total
project length of roughly three months (i.e. the
summer). All timelines are flexible.
If you’re
interested, please fill out this form:
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by the 5th of June. This doesn’t
commit you to anything at all: once students
also register we will then allow students and
mentors to take part in a process of mutual
selection. We warmly encourage
postdoctoral researchers and senior PhD students
to participate as mentors.
Also please
forward this opportunity to any colleagues who
you think might be interested in mentoring a
student! We would like to enlarge this
program and include as many enthusiastic
students as possible.
I very much hope
that you’re interested! Let me know if you have
any questions about this.
Best,
Nabil Iqbal
(on behalf of
the organizing committee for the PWF Bangladesh
Internship Program)