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Applicant
Information
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Updated:
2 June 2009
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PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The natural history collections of the NMNH form the basis
for all original research on the origin and diversity of
life on Earth. These collections are formed from natural
history specimens collected in the field, and these specimens
must be curated before they can be researched by Museum
scientists. Participants in this internship will learn the
art and science of scientific insect specimen curation within
the Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), including specimen
preparation, specimen mounting, labeling, and finally, incorporation
of fully curated specimens into the US National Insect Collection.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Cynipid wasps (otherwise known as ‘gall wasps’)
are an incredibly diverse group of insects. Ranging in size
from 1mm to 8mm, these sting-less wasps create ‘galls’
on plants such as roses and oaks. The NMNH possesses one
of the world’s foremost collections of these wasps,
built over the past 150 years of taxonomic research. Unfortunately,
this national treasure is in crisis, a result of being neglected
for the past 50 years. Participants in this internship will
learn the skills needed to address an aging yet important
insect collection, ranging from disposing of dirty, broken
drawers and foam bottom trays, to re-labeling crumbling
identification tags and updating the current names used
for species.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Division of Fishes seeks an intern to help scan selected
illustrations from the Fish Illustration Collection. The
Fish Illustration Collection is located at the Museum Support
Center (MSC) in Suitland, Maryland (a free shuttle service
is provided from the Natural History Building) and contains
original art, photographs and other visual works depicting
various fish species found throughout the world. The collection
spans a time of more than 150 years and contains images
that document live fish characteristics, such as color and
other external anatomical features that may not be distinguished
in preserved specimens. Interns will reproduce original
works in digital format for a myriad of imaging products
including access to our images using our specimen database.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Fish Division seeks interns to scan radiographs from
the Fish Radiograph Collection. The collection is located
at the Museum Support Center (MSC) in Suitland, Maryland
(free shuttle service is provided from the Natural History
Building) and contains 25,000 radiograph plates imaged from
our fluid-preserved specimen collection. The radiograph
collection dates from 1950's and has images from thousands
of fish species ranging from the primitive & slimy hagfish
to complex but endearing puffers. Interns are needed to
reproduce the plates in digital format, create a spreadsheet
to record metadata, and if time allows, insert the images
into the multimedia module of KeEmu. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Staff of USDA's Systematic Entomology Lab, housed in the
Natural History Building, routinely receive insect specimens
for identification from ports of entry into the United States.
This service is a critical component in preventing accidental
introductions of invasive pests into the US. The majority
of the specimens identified by the USDA’s Hymenoptera
Unit consist ants. As a result, Research Entomologists in
the Hymenoptera Unit have begun work on a fully illustrated,
multiple entry online key (using LucID v. 3.4 software)
to help speed up the identification process. The intern
will prepare ant specimens for imaging with one of two high
performance digital imaging stations to produce images for
the key. In some instances post-imaging manipulation with
Photoshop may be required. Training will be provided in
the use of the imaging equipment.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The National Museum of Natural History is seeking interns
and volunteers to work with the Fish Illustration Collection.
The Fish Illustration Collection is located at the Museum
Support Center (MSC) in Suitland, Maryland and contains original
art, photographs and other visual works depicting various
fish species found throughout the world. The collection spans
a time of more than 150 years and contains images that document
live fish characteristics, such as color and other external
anatomical features that may not be distinguished in preserved
specimens. Interns and volunteers are needed to: rehouse the
illustrations following preservation procedures; perform a
detailed cataloging and inventory of the collection using
a database; and reproduce original works in digital format
for a myriad of imaging products.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Flies, mosquitoes, gnats, etc., members of the insect order
Diptera, represent 10% of the known diversity of life, some
150,000 species, and are of critical importance to us as they
are disease vectors, pollinators, model organisms for research,
biological control agents, and plant pests. Their classification
and names are essential for information management. Be a part
of the team building a modern online index to these flies.
Become acquainted with all aspects of our BDWD and then finalize
a twig on our tree of knowledge for flies. Some work may be
boring, such as data entry or filing of papers, but local
field work to collect and document flies will add variety.
See us on the web at 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will scan literature dealing with taxonomy and
biology of worms in the phylum Nemertea. The NEMERTES web
site is intended to serve as a relatively comprehensive knowledge-base
for specialists, other professionals, and students interested
in an important but understudied phylum of marine worms. Much
of the most important literature is old and difficult to access.
We are providing access to that by scanning and posting it
as PDFs. Nemertean worms are predators and occupy all marine
habitats, as well as some terrestrial and freshwater habitats.
Despite their ecological significance and potential importance
in understanding animal evolution, this particular phylum
of worms tends to be ignored because they are very difficult
to work with and to identify, and getting access to existing
information is exceedingly difficult. Consequently, there
are few specialists and becoming one is very difficult. The
Nemertes web site is intended to make information more widely
and more easily available, so that beginning specialists can
train themselves effectively and specialists as well as non-specialists
can work more efficiently with these worms. The site is built
around a comprehensive literature database indexed and linked
to a taxonomy database, which in turn is linked to image,
glossary, and geographic locality databases. There already
are several hundred PDFs associated with this literature.
These PDFs have become the most appreciated part of the site.
This is an opportunity for someone to make a significant contribution
to advancing access to our knowledge about the world¹s
biological diversity.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) calls for
a preliminary assessment list of the conservation status of
all known plant species. The student will use specimen data
from the U.S. National Herbarium to investigate and analyze
preliminary conservation assessments on select plant families.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Interns will work directly in the US National Herbarium to
extract specimens collected on the US Exploring Expedition
as well as conduct research online, and in libraries and archives
to resolve gaps in the specimen data record. Interns are also
needed to enumerate specimens that have already been located
to maintain organization of specimen data. Other opportunities
include managing the growing Wilkes collection and transcribing
historical documents including some data-entry is required.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
In this project you will file mounted plant specimens into
the U.S. National Herbarium collections. Herbarium specimens
are generally mounted on 11x17 sheets of archival paper and
filed according to a specific sequence, similar to library
books in a library. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Assist with a variety of collections management tasks relating
to botanical specimens, including (but not limited to) sorting
National Cancer Institute herbarium specimen vouchers, filing
newly mounted or return loan specimens, mounting cryptograms
or phanerogam specimens, processing outgoing exchange, etc.
Some of the work will be at the Museum Support Center (MSC)
located in Suitland, Maryland and some will be at the Herbarium
located on the National Mall. The number/variety of tasks
will depend on whether the student is interested in interning
full or part time and the number of weeks available. Tasks
are suitable for part or full time person and for long or
short amounts of time. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The NMNH Department of Paleobiology is home to 35,000 fossiliferous
rocks collected within the Green River Formation in the
states of Colorado and Utah. The age of the Green River
Formation is within the Eocene period and these fossils
specifically date back to around 50 million years before
present. Each rock usually contains an abundance of insects
and floral material as well as spiders, downy feathers,
flowers, reptiles. The Paleobiology Department is in the
process of creating 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Smithsonian's Department of Paleobiology holds the largest
collection of cleared and stained leaves in the world - more
than 20,000 slides - that are mainly used as reference for
botanical fossils. The leaves have been chemically cleared,
then their veins have been stained red to make them easier
to study. We are currently taking digital images of the leaves
so that they can be made accessible over the web to scientists
anywhere in the world. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
This hands on internship will give a student the unique opportunity
to support the butterfly pavilion staff in almost all aspects
of the exhibits daily operations. The intern will assist with
the plant care and animal husbandry in the exhibit, interact
with exhibit visitors, maintain clean conditions in the exhibit
and lab, and work with staff to ensure butterfly containment.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
During this multi-year project, the Discovery Room collection
is being assessed, catalogued (objects identified, given numbers
and put into an excel file) and organized in a new collections
area. The outstanding tasks for this project include completing
the identifying, cataloguing (assigning numbers to objects
or batches of objects) and organizing the collection in a
new storage space. This internship completes the final phase
of the project and includes collections maintenance and learning
how to use a collection in an educational setting. The intern
will: create a catalogue system for an existing, recently
updated collection; organize an existing, recently updated
collection in a newly created storage space; maintain the
objects in the collection and the collection catalogue; cntegrate
objects in the collection into an educational program, product
or setting.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will design hands-on inquiry based discovery boxes
for the Naturalist Center's Standards of Learning cart and
test these programs with visitors. The cart will be stationed
in the Family Learning Center of the Smithsonian’s Naturalist
Center in Leesburg, VA. The cart will contain specimens to
help children learn topics, such as: animal adaptations, biodiversity
and classification, ocean biomes, comparative vertebrate teeth,
etc. Specimens will be selected from biological and earth
science catalogues and requested from the museum. In addition,
the intern could write a proposal to acquire a cart, additional
specimens, and other materials as needed.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will lead school programs at the Smithsonian’s
Naturalist Center in Leesburg, VA. The intern will learn about
the Center’s school programs and lead groups (ages 10
through university) at the Center. Many student groups have
difficulty getting to the center so this project could also
involve giving presentations at the schools. The intern will
also design and implement an evaluation for these programs.
The intern may also seek a grant to acquire additional collections,
carts, and program boxes to bring to schools so that our Naturalist
Center collections remain a reference collection.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Smithsonian’s Naturalist Center, in Leesburg, Virginia
has several thousand uncatalogued sea shells that are roughly
organized within family groups. Intern(s) will sort gastropods
and pelecypods into family groups and store these alphabetically
by family in storage area of Naturalist Center. The final
destination of these shells is within the public area of the
world wide sea shell collection of the Naturalist Center.
Once the shells are sorted, each family can be worked on separately,
verifying identification and collection need, and cataloguing
them within Naturalist Center collections. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The Ocean GeoPortal comprises the online spatial educational
and research arm of NMNH's Ocean Initiative - a joint venture
with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA). The Ocean GeoPortal will encompass the geo-referenced
portion of NMNH's 33 million marine specimens from eight
of the museum's divisions (Invertebrate Zoology, Fish, Mammals,
Amphibians and Reptiles, Minerals, Botany, and Paleobiology).
These large data sets may be combined for display and analysis
(based on fields of taxonomy, location, depth, collector,
ship, expedition, etc) with environmental data sets from
our partners at NOAA, in addition to any world-wide or site-specific
data sets from our collaborators (NASA, USGS, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute, Scripps, Monterey Bay Research
Institute, National Geographic Society, New England Aquarium,
other Smithsonian research units and other academic institutions
with marine programs). We plan to provide extensive data
bases for outside scientists to harvest spatial data through
the GIS Portal Toolkit (GPTK) software. Through customization
of the GeoPortal, we also plan to provide educational materials
developed by collaborators, including static and interactive
maps for K-12 and the general public to access and learn,
as well as incorporating on-line lessons and virtual field
trips into customized versions of ArcIMS and GPTK, along
with links to the planned Google Ocean. Internship opportunities
with the Ocean GeoPortal include:
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will work on isolating plant DNAs from various
forms of tissue samples, checking the amount and integrity
of the DNAs and amplifying and sequencing DNAs with specific
bar coding gene primers. An Excel spreadsheet matching
bar codes to voucher and other information would be produced.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Research projects on the general subject of historical photography
and North American Indians ethnology. Some of current projects
include publication of a work by Alice C. Fletcher titled
Life Among the Indians: Camping with the Sioux and Omaha,
1881-1882; and a publication on Northwest Coast Indian architecture
from Wrangell, Alaska. Also, research on individual photographs
selected for the Handbook volumes including discovery of who,
what, where and when of the image. Each image is a mini research
project. Bringing the historical context back to the image
is challenging and exciting detective work. For examples of
this work see web sites: 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Are you interested in a field/lab based Smithsonian Internship
in the mountains of north central New Mexico at the headquarters
of VCNP in Jemez Springs? If so then this is the project
for you! The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) Arthropod
Survey began in earnest in April 2008. This multi-agency
endeavor involves the USDA's Systematic Entomology Lab,
the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Entomology and
the staff of VCNP. The project was initiated by the Preserve's
Chief Scientist, Dr. Bob Parmenter, and funded by the Valles
Caldera Trust. Through the deployment of 25 malaise and
canopy traps throughout the preserve, we intend to sample
as many indigenous habitats as possible. Sites range from
sprawling valley meadows, valley lakes, acidic (pH=2) pools,
aspen groves, bubbling mud pots, and streams. Over 500 malaise
trap samples were collected in 2008 and we anticipate running
approximately 10-15 malaise traps in 2009. Intern duties
include: servicing traps weekly (involves hiking and off-road
driving), processing trap samples, sorting insect taxa of
interest for research purposes, and processing/mounting/labeling
specimens. Seeking four interns; two from mid June through
July, and another two mid July to the beginning of September.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Taxonomic research in the 21 century is inseparable from
the use of computers and the World Wide Web. The emerging
field of "biodiversity informatics" or “cybertaxonomy”
makes it possible to rapidly synthesize information on systematics,
distribution, ecology, and evolution of organisms and to
make it readily available to the scientific community and
amateur enthusiasts throughout the world. “Pearl Oysters
and their Relatives” (
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will set up and service malaise traps to passively
and non-destructively sample parasitic Hymenoptera fauna
along a beach, brackish, freshwater marsh habitat on the
Chesapeake Bay. These traps are serviced every two weeks,
the residues collected are sorted to higher level taxonomic
groups in Hymenoptera with select groups targeted for dehydration,
labeling, identification, and imaging.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
As part of a large study re-analyzing marine fish diversity
in the Caribbean through DNA Barcoding, we are accumulating
hundreds of digital photographs and preserved voucher specimens
of fishes from which DNA was sampled. The voucher specimens,
which we ship back to the museum in lots containing all
vouchers from one sampling station, need to be sorted into
separate jars, matched to digital color photographs, re-checked
for species identification, and cataloged into the museum's
archival fish collection. There is also the possibility
of assisting with editing of and organizational work on
the digital photographs. Most of the work would be carried
out at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Commelina is the largest genus of the plant family
Commelinaceae. Although it occurs worldwide, it is especially
diverse in tropical Africa, where more than half of its
170 species occur. The African species occur in a great
diversity of habitats. The leaves and spathes (leafy bracts
that enclose the flowers and fruits) in Commelina
species are similar in their development, but each has a
different function. The question that we are asking is whether
species that grow in drier habitats show a greater differentiation
between the leaves and spathes than species that grow in
moist habitats. To answer this question we will use leaves
and spathes of plants that are being grown in the Botany
Department Research Greenhouse. The emphasis will be on
plant anatomy and microtechnique. The techniques to be used
will include paraffin-embedded sections, whole leaf (and
spathe) clearings, epidermal scrapes, and scanning electron
microscopy. All techniques will be taught as part of the
project, but previous lab experience is advantageous 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
If you are interested in or, even better, you have experience
with marine invertebrates, worms, histology, molecular phylogenetics,
biomechanics, photomicrography, digital imaging, 3-d reconstruction,
computer programming (esp. MySQL, PHP, Filemaker), illustration,
web site development, bioinformatics, or a mix of these,
we would like you to try doing it with nemerteans! We also
urgently need people to do scanning and computer translation
of literature, and bibliographic and other kinds of data
entry for our website at 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The purpose of the project is to examine quartz crystals
that have been collected from miarolitic cavities of the
Himalaya pegmatite, California and using CL techniques
the student will look for evidence of magmatic growth
zoning, replacement textures, recrystallization and post-magmatic
alteration that may be preserved in the quartz. Quartz
is ubiquitous in granitic pegmatites, forming throughout
the crystallization history of unzoned and zoned bodies.
Miarolitic cavities (pockets) generally occur during the
final stages of pegmatite consolidation and are the main
source of specimen- and gem-grade quartz crystals. Although
the quartz often forms as near-perfect crystals, their
growth history is poorly known but can be evaluated using
cathodoluminescence (CL). 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will analyze muscovite from the Jacumba pegmatite
field, San Diego County, California to assess the variation
in trace element concentrations. The chemical data will
be used to evaluate perceived differences in two different
pegmatite groups within the pegmatite field. Muscovite
is an important and common mineral phase that occurs in
simple to complex granitic pegmatites. The major element
chemistry of muscovite is relatively invariant, however,
substitution of trace elements (e.g., rubidium, cesium,
lithium, etc.) do frequently occur and can be highly variable.
In fact, the trace-element signature of muscovite can
be used to estimate the degree of chemical complexity
in the pegmatite and also serve as an exploration tool
for rare-element mineralization (e.g., tantalum and tin).
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will conduct chemical and X-ray analysis of
green albite from two Maine pegmatites with the goal of
explaining its color and origin. The bladed variety of
albite known as cleavelandite is fairly common in pegmatites
that exhibit advanced rare-element enrichment. It is typically
white but occasionally displays a light blue color. A
few pegmatites in Maine contain the highly unusual olive-green
colored cleavelandite. The cause of this color is unknown
but is suspected to be related to post-pegmatitic processes.
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
The intern will analyze a suite of pegmatitic microcline
for their Ga content and test the validity of this hypothesis.
The classification of pegmatites into geochemical families
is currently based largely on the identification of accessory
minerals which represent moderate to extreme accumulation
of rare elements that help define the LCT and NYF families.
Accessory index minerals are typically used for distinguishing
between the two geochemical families because they are
easily identifiable and offer a good sense of rare-element
enrichment that can be gained without having to conduct
chemical analyses. This approach works reasonably well
for the more evolved LCT-types, but difficulties arise
when dealing with many “barren” pegmatites from
LCT and NYF affiliations which may lack sufficient accessory
phases needed for classification. It has been recently
suggested that the Ga content of microcline can be used
as discriminant for LCT- and NYF-type pegmatites. 
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:
Seeking an intern to help with sediment analyses of sediment
cores collected off Egypt's Nile Delta (Alexandria, Herakleion,
Canopus) and southern Italy (Magna Graecia, Sybaris).
These materials were collected so as to better interpret
how, why and when ancient Greek sites were submerged more
then 20 feet beneath the waves. If interested in the background
of the research, look at the Discovery Channel TV documentary
"Earthquakes and lost cities" and the article
published by the Geological Society of America in their
journal GSA TODAY, titled "
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