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.

Available projects

These are the projects and supervisors available for summer 2026/27. Applications for these projects are now open.

Submersible liquid nitrogen pump

Supervisors: Dr Grant Lumsden and Mike Davies

Investigating superconducting switches for flux pumps

Supervisors: Dr Dominic Moseley and Dr Ben Mallet

Solid-state superconducting switches

Supervisor: Dr Shen Chong

Condition monitoring in superconducting cable for fusion magnets

Supervisors:  Dr Bart Ludbrook and Dr Shahna Muhammad Haneef

Interface reactions of rare earth nitrides with superconducting electrodes

Supervisor: Dr Catherine Pot and Dr Martin Markwitz

Megawatt-level superconducting rotor development

Supervisor: Dr James Storey and Dr Sebastian Hellmann

Investigation of market size of superconducting motors for land and marine usage

Supervisor: Prof Zhenan Jiang and Dr James Storey

Next generation flux-pump design for space bound magnet systems

Supervisors: Max Goddard-Winchester and Dr Ben Mallett

Fibre-Optic Sensing for Thermal Energy Storage

Supervisors:  Dr Bart Ludbrook and Dr Shahna Muhammad Haneef

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 apply for the 2026/27 positions through the online form. You will also need to send in your CV and an informal copy of your academic transcript (do not purchase an official one) to rri-admin@vuw.ac.nz.

A comment from a 2025 summer research assistant