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What does it involve ?

This scheme is inspired by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programs (UROP) developed by the world's leading universities. Ultimately, it will make it possible to offer hundreds of laboratory research placements to undergraduate students at PSL University. Its aim is to contribute to changing the university culture at undergraduate level, by giving a central role to training through research, and more generally by encouraging a spirit of initiative and autonomy among students, as well as a culture of innovation. It is also an opportunity to attract excellent undergraduate students to research, and to provide doctoral students in particular with supervisory opportunities.

It is based on the creation of groups, comprising one or more research teams or laboratories, which undertake to host undergraduate trainees. Over the course of 2024/2025, the groups formed will host more than a hundred undergraduate students on research placements.

Who is concerned ?

The students concerned are, on the one hand, students enrolled in the PSL University bachelor's degrees (Mathematics and Computer Science, Organisational Sciences, CPES Sciences, Humanities or Social Sciences, CPES Data Sciences, Arts and Cultures, Sciences for a Sustainable World), primarily in L2 (but not exclusively), and, on the other hand, first-year students in the grandes écoles (engineers, normaliens sciences et lettres, and chartists). All the academic fields represented at PSL are involved.
How are they organised?

How is it organized ?

Internships must take place throughout the academic year, according to the following schedule: one day/week between mid-October and the end of the spring semester, then one month full-time in June or July, for a total of two full months' work. Adjustments to this general outline will be possible, depending on the specific features of the institutions, the various disciplines and the constraints of the laboratories.

Internships may include all kinds of activities that contribute to the production of knowledge (preparation and performance of laboratory experiments, work on databases, computer programming, modelling, documentation, surveys, work in archives, fieldwork, theoretical work, etc.), provided that they are clearly part of a scientific problem that the interns can make their own. Trainees should also have experience of scientific life in the host research teams (team or laboratory meetings, seminars, etc.).

It is of course possible for several trainees to work together on the same project. The supervision, or co-supervision, of interns by doctoral students is encouraged. Finally, internship projects can also be developed on the basis of ideas put forward by future interns, if the supervisors so wish.

Deployment of the scheme

The scheme will continue to be rolled out gradually over the next few years, with a minimum of 5 students (for small groups) hosted each year in each group.

The first groups to commit to hosting at least 5 to 10 students per year will benefit from a financial contribution including :

  -  The full cost of internship allowances for 5 years, in the form of an internship grant paid directly by PSL.
  -  An annual bonus for the coordinator of the UROP collective (see below). This bonus will be approximately 1,200 euros for every 10 students hosted, and will be adjusted according to the number of interns.

Each group will appoint a UROP coordinator, whose duties will include informing the group's researchers, guiding PSL University students, helping to match trainees with supervisors, organising the assessment of placements (end-of-internship defence), and generally interacting with the UROP@PSL programme management to implement the scheme.

At the end of five years, the collectives will have to take over the task of paying for the internships via the funding obtained by the researchers (as is currently the case for paying for master's internships).

Objectives

The aim of this call for expressions of interest is to gather proposals from volunteer UROP groups to host at least 5 undergraduate students on work placements per year.
A group may take the form of :

   - A research team or group of teams within a research unit
   - A research unit
   - A group of research units within one or more institutions.

The groups undertake to host 5 or 20 students per year, over 10 years, depending on their size, with financial aid allocated in proportion to the number to which the groups commit.

The structure of the groups may be reviewed on a regular basis.

Information to be provided on the form :

General information

1.    Contact email :
2.    Name of the collective :
3.    Team(s) or laboratory(ies) making up the collective :
4.    Main institution to which the group belongs :
5.    Other institution(s) involved :
6.    UROP coordinator within the group (if the person is already identified) :

Topics

7.    Presentation of the collective and its research themes (1 or 2 paragraphs)
8.    To which Graduate Programme could your collective be linked (thematically)?
9.    Keywords (discipline, sub-disciplines, methods, research themes) :

Organisation of courses

10.    Profiles of the students you might wish to attract (training, skills) :
11.    Example of an internship project title that could be assigned to one or more UROP interns :
12.     Number of students hosted each year :
13.    Do you plan to offer group projects, to be carried out in pairs or in groups with other students? If so, please describe in a few lines what you are planning.
14.    Do you plan to involve doctoral students in supervision?

Additional information

15.    Do you have anything to add?
16.    Comments, suggestions, questions

If you have any questions, please write to: urop@psl.eu