Summer research assistants programme

Spend your summer vacation working with us. Our summer research assistants experience working in a team environment and solve real world problems.

As a summer research assistant with Paihau—Robinson Research Institute you will work alongside some of the top research scientists and engineers in Aotearoa, and contribute to a range of cutting-edge research projects that involve the development of new concepts in materials and manufacturing.

Who can apply

We take students who are currently studying at New Zealand tertiary institutes and universities.

Research assistant positions are open to undergraduate students (usually before their final year) and run from November to February. Generally students are based on site with us at the Gracefield Innovation Quarter in Lower Hutt or our Petone premises.

Project titles

These were the projects and supervisors available during summer 2025/26. Applications for these projects have now closed.

Thermo-mechanical design and build of a 1000A superconducting power supply

Supervisor: Dr Adam Francis

Submersible liquid nitrogen pump

Supervisor: Nic Rogers Rehn

Magnetic field sensing using FBGs embedded in magnetostrictive materials

Supervisor: Dr Shahna Haneef & Dr Bart Ludbrook

Strain and temperature profiling in current-carrying superconducting tapes using optical fibre sensors

Supervisor: Dr Shahna Haneef & Dr Bart Ludbrook

Real-time signal processing techniques for feature extraction of High Impedance Faults in electricity distribution networks

Supervisor: Dr Fiona Stevens McFadden

Exploring magnetic and electrical transport properties in superconductor/ferromagnet nano-thin films

Supervisor: Yao Zhang

Designing and building an automated system for tinning long-distance HTS tape

Supervisor: Dr Xiyong Huang

Analysing data from magnetoplasmadynamic spacecraft thruster tests

Supervisor: Dr Ben Mallett

See the sidebar for full details and descriptions of the projects.

How to apply

If you are a highly talented applied science or engineering student, we’d like to hear from you.

You can register your interest for 2025/26 positions by emailing us. You will be notified in 2026 when positions open up again.

Send your email to rri-admin@vuw.ac.nz

A comment from a summer research assistant