The NeurotechEU Internship Program
The Internship Program Bonn provides bachelor and master students of the NeurotechEU alliance with an opportunity to engage in hands-on lab experiences within the field of neuroscience and neurotechnology. Under the guidance of experienced scientists, participants can actively contribute to ongoing research projects in Bonn.
The program is scheduled for 8-10 weeks from June to August 2025, offering a platform for academic and professional development.
Submission Deadline
Open call: December 16, 2024 to January 26, 2025
Applications for a laboratory internship are managed centrally by the NeurotechEU Project Office Bonn.
NeurotechEU scholars as guests in Bonn
Bild © Universität Bonn / YouTube
Elevate your full potential:
The NeurotechEU Internship Program leading the way!
Are you an undergraduate seeking to delve deeper into the fascinating world of neurotechnology? The NeurotechEU Internship Program offers you a great opportunity to do just that. What awaits you:
Hands-On Lab Experience
Immerse yourself in the fascinating world of neuroscience and gain valuable hands-on experience in a state-of-the-art laboratory. By actively helping to shape an ongoing research project, this internship promises to be a launching pad for your academic and professional success.
Learn from the Best
Elevate your skills under the guidance of excellent scientists who are at the forefront of neurotechnology research. This internship is not just about learning, it is about being mentored by the best minds in the field and turning knowledge into expertise.
Build Your Network
Get in touch with like-minded peers, leading neuroscientists and researchers from Bonn and from all over the world. The NeurotechEU Internship Program is not just an opportunity to expand your knowledge but a chance to build a professional network at an early stage that will support and elevate your future endeavors.
Exceptional Support
The NeurotechEU project office team Bonn is committed to providing support throughout your internship journey. You can expect an exciting leisure program to make not only your time in the lab but also your free time in Bonn unforgettable.
Summer of 2025: Make it Count!
Seize the moment from May to September, dedicating 8–10 weeks to your personal and academic growth. Choose your 3 favorite laboratories, apply today for a first-class research internship and broaden your horizons.
Internship offers: Neuroscience
Beck Group
Head: Prof. Heinz Beck
Institution: Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: som prior wet lab or computational neuroscience expertise
Places offered: 1
Description: Within the NeurotechEU internship program, our group will offer projects on basic mechanisms of epilepsies, as well as mechanisms of pharmacoresistance in chronic epilepsy. Methods include different animal models of epilepsy, basic and advanced electrophysiology and behavioral analyses using machine-learning based segmentation of behavior.
Neurodevelopmental Genetics
Head: Prof. Sandra Blaess
Institution: Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: Midbrain dopaminergic neurons are essential for controlling important brain functions such as reward behavior, voluntary movement, and cognitive processes, and can be divided into subtypes defined by their functional, molecular, and anatomical properties. However, the mechanisms that control the specification of subtypes in the dopaminergic system are largely unclear. To address this question, we investigate the properties of dopaminergic subpopulations defined by their developmental history and genetic profile, from their origin in the ventricular zone to their integration into functional networks and their influence on specific behaviors in mice.
Systems Neuroscience – Cell Diversity
Head: Prof. Özgün Gökçe
Institution: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: quantitative skills, e.g. Mathematics, R and/ or Phyton programming experience
Places offered: 1
Description: Computational Analysis of Immune-Neuron Interactions via Spatial Transcriptomics. Interns will analyze how immune and neuron cells interact in aging using spatial transcriptomics. They'll do deep computational analysis and get experimental training. Applicants need good skills in R or Python and basic statistics. This internship offers valuable research experience and skill development in data analysis and biological computing.
Neural Circuit Computations
Head: Dr. Jan Gründemann
Affiliation: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: programming skills
Places offered: 1
Description: Our research group is interested in how large populations of neurons encode sensory stimuli from the environment to form associative memories and adapt behavioural states. In this internship, you will work closely together with experimentalists and data scientists to implement and develop approaches for an integrated analysis of large-scale neuronal activity and video-graphic behavioural data to discover latent states in neuronal patterns and behaviours. Join us if you are interested in computational neuroscience approaches and machine learning to advance our understanding of neural coding in health and disease.
Grunwald Kadow Laboratory
Head: Prof. Ilona Grunwald Kadow
Institution: Institute of Physiology II (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: Our research aims at understanding the interplay between internal (e.g. hunger) and behavioral states (e.g. moving) and chemosensory perception. We offer internships for students interested in using behavioral analysis of flies (or mice) in combination with optogenetics to understand how brains integrate such states with external information to produce the most beneficial behavior for an organism.
Adaptive Optics Imaging and Visual Psychophysics
Head: Dr. Wolf Harmening
Institution: Experimental Ophthalmology (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: Computational, optics, physics or engineering background desirable
Places offered: 1
Description: If you have a knack for imaging, advanced image analysis, and are strong in computational methods, consider joining the AOVISIONLab. In our lab, we study the human eye and visual perception with advanced optical imaging systems. Specifically, we use high resolution adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy to create photoreceptor-resolved images in the living human retina. By means of fast optical light switching and real-time compensation for retinal motion, we are also able to target and stimulate individual photoreceptor cells for precise visual function testing. Tasks within this internship will be to learn how to and operate these unique photonic instruments on real human participants and/or in AI-supported image analysis for photoreceptor-resolved retinal mapping and topographical analyses.
Synaptic and Glial Plasticity Lab
Head: Prof. Christian Henneberger
Institution: Institute of Cellular Neurosciences (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1 (time periods: June/July or July/August 2025)
Description: Information exchange at synapses, neuronal processing of incoming signals and their plasticity are sensed and modified by non-neuronal cells such as astrocytes. How such interactions determine hippocampal function and behaviour is what our research primarily focuses on. We study this by a broad range of experimental techniques such as multiphoton fluorescence and superresolution microscopy and electrophysiology, mainly in the rodent hippocampus.
Neuroscience of Motivation, Action, and Desire Laboratory
Head: Prof. Nils B. Kroemer
Institution: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: none
Places offered: 1
Description: In our project, we want to assess how non-invasive stimulation of the vagus nerve (tVNS) affects brain responses and gastric activity in patients with Major Depression Disorder (MDD). Our focus is on the role of the vagus nerve in modulating motivation and homeostasis, as well as the potential clinical implications of tVNS. By joining this project, you will learn about brain stimulation, gut-brain interaction, human motivation and neuroimaging techniques (fMRI).
Personalized Digital Health and Telemedicine
Head: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Björn Krüger
Institution: Department of Epileptology (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: programming skills in Python, ML experience
Places offered: 4
Project 1: We are currently offering an internship opportunity focused on advancing our work with wearable EEG devices. The successful intern will be integral in the systematic collection of EEG data, contributing to the expansion of our dataset for enhanced research outcomes. A primary objective of this internship is to refine and improve existing classification algorithms tailored to wearable EEG data. The intern will engage in hands-on tasks involving data collection, processing, and algorithm enhancement, gaining valuable experience in the intersection of neurotechnology and machine learning. This role offers a unique opportunity to actively contribute to the development of cutting-edge applications in neuroscientific research.
Project 2: We are currently offering an exciting internship opportunity focused on a comprehensive epilepsy video EEG dataset. As part of this project, the intern will play a key role in refining annotations to ensure data accuracy and relevance. Utilizing advanced tools such as Google Media Pipe and Vision, the intern will extract intricate information, including hand motions and points of interest on the face, from the video recordings. Another crucial aspect of the internship involves leveraging statistical analyses to derive meaningful insights and patterns from individual video recordings. This hands-on experience provides a unique chance to work with a medical dataset, utilize cutting-edge technology, and contribute significantly to the development of critical statistics in the context of epilepsy research.
Neural Circuits of Magnetic Orientation
Head: Dr. Pascal Malkemper
Institution: Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior – caesar (MPINB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: some prior wet lab or experimental/ computational neuroscience (python, matlab) expertise
Places offered: 1 (time period: June/ July 2025)
We aim to understand how animals detect and use the Earth’s magnetic field for orientation. In a top-down approach, we study the neural circuits involved in the perception of magnetic fields from the processing centers in the brain back to the primary receptor cells. Our model species is the African mole-rat Fukomys anselli, a subterranean mammal and extraordinary magnetic navigator that spends its entire life in total darkness.
We investigate the neuronal navigation circuits with an interdisciplinary neuroethological approach that includes whole-brain activity mapping and single-unit recordings in freely moving animals complemented with anatomical and histological techniques. We hope our work will gain crucial insights into the neuronal machinery that enables animals to detect magnetic fields. An understanding of how mammals detect weak magnetic fields promises advances in the auspicious field of magnetogenetics. It provides the missing mechanistic basis to assess and predict the effects of artificial electromagnetic fields on vertebrates.
An appropriate project will be selected according to the applicant's skills and interests.
Neonatal Neuroscience
Head: Prof. Hemmen Sabir
Institution: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 2
Description: We are using different in vitro and in vivo models to identify mechanisms of newborn brain injury. The focus of our research is to describe the interplay between the peripheral and central immune response following hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and to test neuroprotective treatments.
Translational Dementia Research
Head: Prof. Anja Schneider
Institution: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: We are interested in developing and testing novel fluid biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases and understanding the role of microglia in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, using mouse and tissue culture models.
Center for Economics and Neuroscience
Head: Dr. Johannes Schultz
Instition: Institute for Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research (IEECR) Affiliations: Center for Economics and Neuroscience CENs
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: programming skills
Places offered: 1
Description: We study the neural mechanisms underlying aspects of social interactions between humans, such as: How do social emotions arise, and how do they influence our decisions? How do we integrate information from other people during social interactions? Why and when do people adhere to social norms?
Tchumatchenko Group
Head: Prof. Tatjana Tchumatchenko
Institution: Tchumatchenko Group (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: quantitative skills, e.g. linear algebra and programming experience
Places offered: 3
Description: Along the following scientific directions we want to design a computational Master thesis project together with you for a duration of 6–12 months. Qualified female candidates are particularly encouraged to apply.
Project 1: Computational study of readout from recurrent networks with fluctuating weights. We have shown theoretically and using data from our collaborators that spines fluctuate in a lognormal way across time, but it is not clear how to read out information robustly from these fluctuating networks.
Project 2: We want to study how artificial neural networks (ANNs) can communicate information between each other. By training each via reinforcement learning and by compressing the goal space, we want to design together with you messages to be passed to other ANNs that do not degrade with the number of communication steps and can convey a sequence of goals.
Project 3: We want to study together with you energy optimal plasticity rules and find computational rules underlying the molecular motion in dendrites.
Internship offers: Molecular and Cellular Biology
Dahl Research Group
Head: Dr. Christiane Dahl
Institution: Institute for Microbiology and Biotechnology (UoB)
Faculty: Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: We work on the genetics and biochemistry of microbial sulfur oxidation. The conversion of sulfur compounds is one of the oldest biological strategies for energy conservation and even today sulfur metabolizing prokaryotes are of immense importance for the biogeochemical sulfur cycle. Our focus is on the study of oxidative sulfur metabolism in bacteria, with emphasis on the biochemical, biophysical, and structural characterization of the enzymes involved.
Endesfelder Research Group
Head: Prof. Ulrike Endesfelder
Institution: Institute for Microbiology and Biotechnology (UoB)
Faculty: Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: dependent on the focus either some A) wet lab experience, B) microscopy experience or C) analysis/coding experience
Places offered: 1
Description: Microbes as single-cell organisms are important model systems to study cellular mechanisms and immense progress has been made in characterizing and quantifying the behavior of single cells based on molecular interactions and assemblies in the complex environment of live cultures.
Importantly, single-molecule imaging enables the in vivo determination of the stoichiometry and molecular architecture of subcellular structures and yields quantitative, spatiotemporally resolved molecular maps unraveling dynamic heterogeneities and subpopulations on the subcellular level.
Dependent on the student’s background and interest, the following work could be conducted:
a) Focus on wet-lab: Genetic modifications of microbial organisms, creating new plasmids or strains for single-molecule imaging, characterization of strains and samples
b) Focus on microscopy: Preparing microscope samples strains, super-resolution imaging and single-particle tracking of molecules of interest
c) Focus on data analysis: Advanced data analyses and modeling of quantitative single-molecule data.
The research group of the Institute of Innate Immunity offers four different research internships:
Systems Immunology and Proteomics
Head: Prof. Felix Meissner
Institution: Institute of Innate Immunity (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: none
Places offered: 1
Description: The Meissner lab develops and applies mass spectrometry-based proteomics approaches to dissect mechanisms of sterile inflammation. An internship in our group will provide expertise in cellular, biochemical, mass spectrometric and bioinformatic analyses of neuro-inflammatory processes relevant for diverse CNS diseases.
Biophysical Imaging and Molecular Physiology
Head: Prof. Dagmar Wachten
Institution: Institute of Innate Immunity (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: none
Places offered: 1
Description: We aim to understand how tissue ecosystems are maintained by cellular communication. Here, we focus on primary cilia-dependent cellular functions in different cell types, e.g., neuronal progenitors, mesenchymal cells, or epithelial cells, and how they control cellular communication in the tissue niche. To address our questions, we apply optogenetics, imaging, cell biological techniques, mouse models, and multi-dimensional “omics” approaches.
Molecular Immunology
Head: Prof. Bernardo Franklin
Institution: Institute of Innate Immunity (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: none
Places offered: 1
Description: (none)
Cellular Immunology and Infection
Head: Dr. Florian I. Schmidt
Institution: Institute of Innate Immunity (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: none
Places offered: 1
Description: (none)
Scherer Reasearch Group
Head: Dr. Katharina Scherer
Institution: Institute for Microbiology and Biotechnology (UoB)
Faculty: Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: Herpes simplex viruses are large, very old DNA viruses that have been codiverging with their hosts for millions of years and can infect neurons. The goal of the project is to learn more about the way that these viruses spread from cell to cell. We will aim to visualise the sites between infected cells that are used for virus transmission with advanced light microscopy techniques.
Psychiatric Genomics and Epigenomics
Head: Prof. Eva C. Schulte
Institution: Research Section Psychiatric Genomics and Epigenomics (UKB)
Faculty: Medicine
Study level: Master students
Requirements: some prior wet lab or dry lab experience (internship or course)
Places offered: 1
Description: We focus on the genetics of psychiatric disorders in clinical care and basic research. For many years, we have participated in international consortia to identify genetic risk factors for common, complex genetic diseases (e.g. Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, COVID-19 HGI). These have successfully established diverse genetic risk factors for many complex disorders. What is lacking, however, is an understanding of how these genetic risk factors lead to mental health disorders or infectious diseases. In our work, we seek to bridge this gap between the identification of genetic risk factors and their pathophysiologic consequences. To do so, methodologically, we use statistical genetics (association studies, polygenic risk scores), "omics" approaches (lipidomics), and high-throughput functional follow-ups (CRISPR screens). Phenotypically, we focus on, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia but also on transdiagnostic approaches as well as infectious disease-related phenotypes.
Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences Lab
Head: Jun. Prof. Alice Toso
Institution: Institute for Archeology and Cultural Anthropology (UoB)
Faculty: Philosophy
Study level: Bachelor students and Master students
Requirements: some prior wet lab experience
Places offered: 1
Description: In the BoCAS lab, Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences, we routinely analyse ancient biomolecules (lipids and proteins) from archaeological human bones and teeth to reconstruct human past life and health. The samples come from a range of different sites in the world from Europe to Asia, covering a wide chronology from prehistory to the modern period. Biomolecular approaches are used to extract lipids and proteins to measure dietary practices, breastfeeding and weaning practices in non-adult individuals, as well as sex estimation and migratory background.
FAQs
The Program is aimed at Bachelor's and Master's students of the NeurotechEU alliance. Students of the University of Bonn and students of other partner universities of the University of Bonn are not eligible to apply. Depending on the number and quality of applications received, a maximum of 25 places will be awarded.
Applications are submitted via our online application portal Mobility-Online. You will need to upload PDF versions of the following documents as part of your application:
- Motivation letter
- Recommendation letters (2)
- CV (Europass)
- Transcript of Records (minimum GPA of 3.0/ equivalent to a 2.0 in the German grading system)
- Certificate of enrolment
Yes, you can choose up to three laboratories in your application to increase your chances of getting an internship offer. However, it’s only possible to apply once a year.
All internships take place from June to August and last 2 month. There are two fixed time peridos that can be chosen depending on availability and offer: June - July or July - August 2025.
Yes, as an enrolled student at a NeurotechEU partner university you have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship at your home university. Please contact the mobility manager at your home university.
Students who are unable to receive financial support from their home university should contact the NeurotechEU Project Office Bonn.
You can find out which specific requirements are necessary for the individual internships under 'requirements' in the drop-down menu above.
We cannot arrange apartments, but we are happy to advise you with tips and tricks.
Whether your internship can be credited to you at your home university varies from degree to degree. Please clarify in advance how the internship can be recognized. In any case, you’ll receive a certificate for your internship and gain valuable experience.
Sponsoring
