2026 Directed Energy Summer Internship
The Air Force Institute of Technology, Center for Directed Energy is looking for candidates to participate in the 2026 Summer Internship Program. This is a paid internships for 10-12 weeks at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Dayton, Ohio).
All applicants must be U.S Citizens and be able to pass a background check.
Preferred candidates are juniors or seniors with an interest in graduate school, carrying a GPA no less than 3.0.
Majors the program is seeking:
- Physics
- Atmospheric Science
- Optics
- Chemistry
- Materials Science
Programming experience and familiarity with MATLAB is preferred but not required.
Up to 7 intern positions will be filled, with 14 project topics to choose from. Interns will be assigned projects and have the opportunity to work with various research staff, faculty, and graduate students.
2026 Project Titles
- Effect of Aerosols on Optical Turbulence
- Image blur due to aerosols and correlation to aerosol morphology and optical properties
- Optical Turbulence Lapse with Altitude
- Sonic Anemometer Resiliency and Turbulence Measurement Accuracy Study
- Seasonal atmospheric aerosol trends: reassessing the Global Aerosol Dataset through analytical methods
- Determining bulk refractive index of ambient aerosols for LEEDR improvements
- Aerosol/Particulate absorption (optical properties) quantification (250 nm to 40 um)
- Quantifying cloud UV to RF transmission/extinction effects on CFLOS and FSO communications
- Worldwide RF/Microwave link studies using Weather Cubes
- Investigation of Thermal Blooming due to Aerosol Absorption
- Aerosol Morphology, Speciation, and Quantification for Nuclear Non-proliferation
- Working with WEIRD (Wavelet-Enhanced Image Velocimetry for Radiative Data and/or Wind field Estimation from InfraRed Data) algorithm for MWIR images
- Database Management and Analyses (i.e., processing, quality checking, outliers’ detections, and preliminary analysis)
- MWIR Polymer-Based Fabric Tower Experiment and Thermal Image/Data Processing