2014 Alliance Research Internship Program
between Columbia University and École Polytechnique
Created in 2002, the Alliance Program is an innovative joint-venture between Columbia University, the
École Polytechnique, Sciences Po, and Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Since 2008, the Alliance
Research Internship Program allows 3rd year students from the École Polytechnique to complete a
research internship project at Columbia University in a wide range of disciplines.
Internship Description
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Research projects are available at the Department of Computer Science (CS), the Department of
Earth & Environmental Engineering (EEE), and the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) of the
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; and at the Center for International Earth
Science Information Network (CIESIN), the International Research Institute for Climate and Society
(IRI), and the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy (LCSE) of the Earth Institute, and the
Department of Physics at Columbia University.
Students work with a faculty member, who acts as an academic advisor and supervises their
research project.
Internships start in April 2014. The duration, objectives and tasks of the internship will be discussed
with the supervisor at the host center or department.
Internships are not paid. Students are responsible for finding housing.
All students are required to apply for a J1 Student Intern Visa to conduct an internship in the United
States. Please note that $500 fees are required by Columbia University for the procedure.
Applications
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To apply, students will send their application to the Alliance Program to lb2808@columbia.edu
Applications must include: a CV, a cover letter (1 page), and a letter of recommendation. For
confidentiality matters, sponsors should send letters of recommendation directly to Lauranne
Bardin, Assistant Director of the Alliance Program (lb2808@columbia.edu).
All materials must be submitted in English.
Deadline: December 15, 2013
Contact
Lauranne BARDIN, Alliance Program Assistant Director
Email: lb2808@columbia.edu
For more information
Alliance Program: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alliance/
CIESIN: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/
IRI: http://portal.iri.columbia.edu/
Lenfest Center for sustainable energy: http://www.energy.columbia.edu/
Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering: http://eee.columbia.edu/
Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/
Department of Electrical Engineering: http://www.ee.columbia.edu/
Department of Physics: http://physics.columbia.edu/
CIESIN – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Developing High Performance Green Infrastructure Systems to Sustain Coastal Cities
Faculty Sponsor: Mark Becker, Associate Director for Geospatial Applications, CIESIN
Description: Many coastal cities are turning to urban green infrastructure (GI) to mitigate coastal zone
pollution. Urban GI, such as green roofs, green streets, advanced street-tree pits, rainwater gardens and
bio-swales, introduce vegetation and perviousness back into city landscapes, thereby reducing the
volume and pollutant loading of urban runoff. This new five-year project funded by the US National
Science Foundation will use the Bronx River "Sewershed" in New York City as living test bed for
developing and testing a platform for real-time monitoring and control of urban GI networks. CIESIN is
leading the project component on geospatial infrastructure and analysis. The intern will also have the
opportunity to interact with the project's cross-center interdisciplinary team that includes engineers,
urban planners, hydrologists, and legal experts.
2) Spatial Analysis of Haiti's National Infrastructure and Facilities Inventory Data
Faculty Sponsors: Alex Fischer, Program Manager; and Paola Kim-Blanco, Staff Associate, CIESIN
Description: CIESIN and other Earth Institute colleagues are supporting the Government of Haiti to
collect data on Haiti's national infrastructure and facilities. These data range from basic geo-location to
more detailed attribute data about each facility. This internship would support the CIESIN research team
to produce a series of maps about one department in the south of Haiti and help develop analytic
frameworks to compare the facilities data with spatial data on population and hazards. Data processing
and analysis skills are required, and some experience with mapping and spatial analysis is preferred.
3) Investigating the Impact of Scientific Data
Faculty Sponsors: Dr. Robert Downs, Senior Digital Archivist; and Dr. Robert Chen, Director, CIESIN
Description: Measuring the use of data products and services offered by scientific data centers and
other data providers can demonstrate the value of the data to society. Citations of data in the scientific
literature, textbooks, policy documents, and other forms of media provide evidence of this value. This
project will continue CIESIN efforts to systematically assess the impacts and value of interdisciplinary
data from its NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) through statistical analysis of
citation metrics, in part drawing on the new Data Citation Index developed by Thomson-Reuters. The
student will assist in study design and analysis and in writing up results.
IRI – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Characterization of long-term climate trends and seasonal-cycle behavior over Africa and South
Asia
Faculty Sponsors: Arthur M. Greene, Associate Research Scientist; and Andrew W. Robertson, Senior
Research Scientist, IRI
Description: We are designing stochastic simulations of “near-term” climate change (out to about 2050),
that will be used to drive agricultural models in various regions in Africa and South Asia. These
simulations focus on the growing season, or seasons, which must be clearly defined, both in the practical
sense and with respect to climatology. Because the statistical models utilized assume a degree of spatial
coherence, the regions modeled cannot be too large. There is no predefined size limit, but rather,
regional boundaries for simulation purposes are delimited via spatial coherence, in both long-term
trends and the seasonal cycle. Assessments of spatial coherence with respect to these properties, and
the identification of optimal regional boundaries for simulation purposes, constitute the focus of the
project work.
“Climate” as used here, refers principally to precipitation and temperature. These variables will be
studied in terms of seasonal cycle, trend and spatiotemporal variability, focusing on the 20th to early
21st centuries. A range of tools will be utilized, including cluster analysis, empirical orthogonal functions
and correlation maps. The end result will be a set of well-defined regions that are suitable for the
development of stochastic simulation models.
Candidates should have good mathematical skills, and familiarity with basic climate science would be
helpful. The candidate should also be proficient in the use of one or more high-level scripting languages.
There is a good pre-existing code base written in the Python programming language that the candidate
may utilize; otherwise Matlab and other standard programming tools, as well as the analytic and display
facilities of the IRI data library, are available.
LENFEST CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Air Capture Lab Automation:
Faculty Sponsors: Klaus S. Lackner, Director; and Allen B. Wright, Senior Staff Associate, LCSE
Description: We have been and will continue to develop a suite of automated experiments to better
characterize the humidity swing sorbents we use for capturing carbon dioxide from ambient air. The
intern will work on lab automation, develop and upgrade LABVIEW program modules. This work will
add modules and features to several data collection systems for air capture experiments. In addition,
the intern will help by documenting the different software applications and create a manual for use in
operating the air capture experimental suite of experiments. This modeling and documentation project
requires the use of National Instruments “LABVIEW” software and PYTHON language skills. (The student
will learn about these programming languages if not already familiar with it).
2) Transferring carbon dioxide from air into water.
Faculty Sponsors: Klaus S. Lackner, Director; and Allen B. Wright, Senior Staff Associate, LCSE
Description: We are currently developing a set of experiments to transfer carbon dioxide from air into
water as dilute carbonic acid. We see a number of applications for this technology. The intern would
be expected to help in the design of experiments and test apparatus to improve this concept and
demonstrate its viability for various applications from feeding algae to injecting carbonic acid rich brines
into tailing piles with a large basic mineral component. Work will include assembly of test devices,
operation of these test devices and the introduction of automated control systems into the apparatus.
3) Air Capture Computational Model for Sorbent/Air interactions
Faculty Sponsors: Klaus S. Lackner, Director; and Allen B. Wright, Senior Staff Associate, LCSE
Description: We plan to study the interaction of wind, humidity and temperature with sorbent surfaces
designed to take carbon dioxide out of the air. Our goal is to optimize the utilization of sorbent material
under constantly varying weather conditions in realistic environments in which air capture units might
be deployed. The study will consider wind speeds and wind directions, humidity, precipitation,
temperature and sunlight. We believe that inspiration from natural systems will be extremely useful in
developing systems better adapted to real world exposure. The intern is expected to contribute to the
development of a research agenda around these topics. This will involve literature searches, simple first
order models of the behavior of such systems and making decisions in formulating and refining the
project. This work will be in close cooperation with LCSE faculty members and Ph. D. students, and
should result in a student report that scopes out the issues and complications that a multi-year research
agenda would have to address.
4) Air Capture Test Unit:
Faculty Sponsors: Klaus S. Lackner, Director; and Allen B. Wright, Senior Staff Associate, LCSE
Description: Our goal is to finalize the construction and operation of a small air capture device that can
operate continuously in an outdoor environment in the New York climate. Our goal is to have the device
that is nearing completion to operate continuously in an outdoor environment. The Intern will have the
opportunity to improve the operation of the device and demonstrate its behavior in a real world
environment. The final output would be an experimental report summarizing experimental results,
lessons learned and performance characteristics of this first of a kind device.
EARTH & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Role of unsaturated downdrafts and cold pools in the transition from shallow to deep convection
Faculty Sponsor: Pierre Gentine, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering
This project will be performed in cooperation with Prof. Zhiming Kuang (Harvard University)
Description: One of the main challenges of current weather prediction and climate models is to
accurately depict the transition from shallow (non-precipitating) to deep (precipitating) convection
regimes with important ramifications (poor diurnal cycle of convective rain if any over continents,
delimitation of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, poor timing of the onset of rainy season…). During
this internship we will investigate the transition from shallow to deep convection using high-resolution
Large-Eddy Simulations that can resolve most of the turbulence. We will focus on the role of
unsaturated downdrafts induced by rain reevaporation and the subsequent formation of density
currents/cold pools which are key for the triggering of new rainfall.
Skills: fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, some language experience preferentially in Fortran.
2) Urban heat island effect on cloud, albedo and precipitation
Faculty Sponsor: Pierre Gentine, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering
Description: It is now well known that dry land patches can introduce substantial mesoscale flow and
can help trigger rainfall and more clouds than over wet areas, which seems counterintuitive at first. This
results in a negative feedback in why dry patches tend to be homogenized by further precipitation. We
will investigate the role of urban heat island across different cities: Paris, Sao Paolo and try to define
how climate is changed by large urban areas compared to their agricultural/natural surrounding and its
implications for both the mean diurnal variables (temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation) but
also for their extremes. To this end we will use a combination of observation (remote sensing, weather
stations) and modeling. We will also investigate the role of the aerosol in the response of rain over large
cities.
Skills: data analysis, some fluid dynamics and thermodynamics
3) Using tree rings to reconstruct long-term hydrology and water stress in 2 species of tree
Faculty Sponsor: Pierre Gentine, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering
Description: For the last decade a real interest has emerged from tree-rings analysis. Climatic conditions
and plant water stress are well recorded in wood anatomy. They can provide long-term data to better
comprehend vegetation response and intent to forecast climate change impact on forest ecosystems.
We will investigate more precisely the data from a semi-arid ecosystem dominated by two different
species: Pinion and Junipers. During the internship we will be looking at the wood anatomy to develop a
statistical model relating tracheas diameters and tree ring width with climatic and hydrological
conditions. The final idea is to identify robust predictors for wood structure and plant water stress as
well as removing potential biases.
Skills: data analysis, (R,Matlab), interest in nature related understanding
4) Xylem - phloem coupling and stomata opening
Faculty Sponsor: Pierre Gentine, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering
Description: Stomata might be the most important regulator of the water, energy and carbon cycles.
However our understanding of stomata and their closing/opening, which controls the carbon, water and
energy cycle at the surface, is still poorly understood.
We will build a new model of stomata opening based on the coupling of the xylem (upward water flow
in the sap) and phloem (sugars descent in the sap) to understand how the carbohydrate and water can
control stomata opening. This should relax to new insights on the way stomata opens and regulate
among different species.
Skills: fluid dynamics, programming, physical intuition.
COMPUTER SCIENCE – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Summer Research Experience in the Mobile Social Lab of Columbia University
Faculty Sponsor: Augustin Chaintreau, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Description: The Mobile Social Lab in the department of Computer Science at Columbia University in
New York City invites application from students for summer research experience. We are looking for
strong and motivated students to work on the design and analysis of the next generation of social
networking tools.
The goal of social computing, broadly defined, is to take advantage of the unprecedented knowledge on
human behaviors and collective actions recorded through online social networks, content sharing and
collaborative applications. The Mobile Social Lab conducts research in algorithms, probabilistic
modeling, network economics and networking systems.
We conduct *transformative* research: we believe that social networking can be redefined on an open
communication model, like the Internet. In this vision, different and possibly competing entities can
collaborate, sharing private data according to a proper economic transactions putting users in control,
allowing new applications to distribute faster and cheaper services.
We conduct *grounded* research: we believe that understanding and improving social networking
services requires new proof techniques and new measurements to come together. Our research is
typically published in the research community of ACM SIGCOMM, SIGMETRICS and SIGMOBILE, SIGWEB
and in connection with industrial research labs and the NY start-up scene. Successful applicants are
expected to join our team of 2 faculty and 4 Ph.D students, to work on a personal research project,
targeting a research publication. Topics will be defined after discussion with the candidate's research
interests, and will be related to one the following themes: 1- Mobile Social Dynamics, in particular
studying how one could design models and algorithms reconciling the risk and the value of location
information in mobile apps for the users. 2- Social Network Economics, in particular understanding the
efficiency of information production/communication in social media with incentive and rewards such
blog ad traffic, sponsored tweets, referral, etc. 3- Economics of personal data, in particular to design
auction mechanisms protecting privacy and allowing to trade information with online providers. 4Efficiency of crowd sourcing, to study task scheduling model when collaboration follows a social graph.
Applicants will be expected to primarily use their technical training either in mathematics, network
modeling and analysis of algorithms, or in systems and measurement skills. We are looking for creativity,
breadth of mathematical and computational interest, and commitment to research and innovation for
later studies or career.
2) Distributed Systems
Faculty Sponsor: Augustin Chaintreau, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Description: A number of projects are available, which revolve around broad systems topics, including
distributed systems, operating systems, and security and privacy, with a particular focus on emerging
cloud and mobile technologies. One overarching theme of these projects is the development of new
abstractions and mechanism for “responsible data management”. We believe that many of the security
and privacy challenges users face today with new cloud and mobile technology stem from careless user
data management practices, which expose data needlessly to a variety of threats, such as device theft,
cloud intrusions, or legal subpoenas. At Columbia, we are building a set of new operating and
distributed systems abstractions that facilitate rigorous management of sensitive data. A few examples
of ongoing projects in this direction are included below. Interns will be in charge of smaller, specific
parts of them, under the supervision of faculty members and Ph.D. students.
Duties:
Interns participating on these projects will:
(1) write code to implement the systems;
(2) evaluate the systems using real applications and benchmarks;
(3) write a brief report to summarize their designs and experimental findings.
Value to Students:
Interns will have the opportunity to:
(1) learn about mobile operating systems (e.g., Android, iOS), cloud environments (e.g., Amazon AWS),
Web technologies (e.g., Ruby/Rails, Django, Node.js, MongoDB), and distributed systems concepts;
(2) improve their coding skills;
(3) produce research artifacts that solve a real, important problem; and
(4) acquire skills valuable for a lifetime, including time management, collaboration, and experimentaldriven system design.
Requirements:
Students must have:
(1) solid analytical skills;
(2) some coding experience;
(3) a deep interest and excitement about computer science and systems in general.
Example Projects:
CleanOS: Minimizing exposure of sensitive data on mobile devices.
Today’s mobile devices are saturated with sensitive information due to operating systems (OSes) that
never securely erase data and applications that hoard data onto the vulnerable device for performance
or convenience. This accumulated data is placed at risk if the device is stolen or lost. We are building
CleanOS, an Android-based OS that manages sensitive data rigorously and minimizes its exposure at any
time.
EncOS: Modern protection abstractions for modern OSes.
Data storage abstractions in OSes have evolved enormously. While traditional OSes used to provide
fairly low-level abstractions – files and directories – modern OSes, including Android, iOS, OSX, and
recent Windows, embed much higher-level abstractions, such as relational databases or objectrelational models. Despite the change in abstraction, many crucial protection systems, such as
encryption or deniable systems, still operate at the old file level, which often renders them ineffective.
We are building EncOS, an encryption system that protects data at the level of logical data objects, a
new protection abstraction designed for modern OSes.
Evade: Adaptive Web applications.
Large-scale clouds are magnets for increasingly sophisticated intrusion attacks. Intrusion detection
systems have long been designed to detect and prevent such attacks, but they present a difficult
challenge: achieving high detection rates results in huge numbers of false positives, for which no good
handling mechanisms exist. We are building Evade, a new cloud architecture designed to deal with
intrusion alarms cheaply and gracefully. In Evade, applications “change face” in reaction to even remote
suspicions of attack, by automatically turning off certain functionality, UI controls, or access to data that
is deemed too sensitive for a potential exposure.
AdWiser: Adding transparency to Web services.
Today’s Web services accumulate immense amounts of sensitive information – such as emails, search or
purchase logs, or locations – and use them to target advertisements, prices, or products at users.
Presently, users have little insight into how their data is used for such purposes. To enhance
transparency, we are building AdWiser, a Chrome plugin that predicts what data – such as emails or
searches – is used to target which ads in Gmail, which prices in Amazon, etc. The mechanism is
independent on the Web service, although the plugin’s instantiation is not. The insight is to compare
ads/prices witnessed by different accounts with similar, but not identical, data.
vTube: Interactive virtual appliance repository for long-term data preservation.
While limiting accumulation is important for certain types of content, preserving it long-term is equally
important for other types of content. Solutions for short- to medium-term persistence already exist,
however long-term preservation (tens to hundreds of years) is an open problem. How can we ensure
access to our documents, videos, photos, or applications 50 years from now when their underlying
dependencies, such as libraries, codecs, OSes, and hardware platforms, will be obsolete or gone? We are
building vTube, an interactive repository for long-term preservation and access of digital artifacts. It is
similar to YouTube, but streams virtual appliances, i.e., the content plus its dependencies, instead of
videos.
Promiscuous: Scalable firehose for data-driven service integrations.
User data has become the principal asset of the Internet era, which everyone strives to acquire and
process. A new economy is emerging, in which continuously changing user data is being sold or shared
for others to process upon. That economy must be controlled and managed carefully so that
information can be shared efficiently, with strong semantics, and securely across applications. To this
end, we are building Promiscuous, an easy-to-use, strong-semantics Web programming framework for
large-scale, real-time data sharing between Web services. We have deployed an early version of
Promiscuous at a NYC-based startup, and we are now extending it for better semantics and features.
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
Description: The Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics welcomes students interested in
the fabrication and analysis of organic thin film transistors and organic photovoltaic devices.
1) Indoor-light optimized energy harvesting photovoltaics
Faculty Sponsor: Ioannis Kymissis, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering
2) Graphene electrode tandem photovoltaics
Faculty Sponsor: Ioannis Kymissis, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering
3) Advanced testing of organic transistors using impedance analysis
Faculty Sponsor: Ioannis Kymissis, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering
PHYSICS – INTERNSHIP OFFERS 2014
1) Research Internship in Materials Theory at Columbia University
Faculty sponsor: Andrew Millis, Professor, Department of Physics
Description: The Millis group in the Department of Physics at Columbia University performs theoretical
and computational studies to understand the relation of the fundamental quantum mechanics of
interacting many particle systems and the experimental and device properties of actual materials. We
are particularly interested in the remarkable superconducting, magnetic and conducting properties of
transition metal oxides both in bulk and in superlattice form. An internship may be available for a
student interested finding ways to create new (artificially constructed) materials with desired
properties, including higher superconducting or magnetic transition temperatures. The work requires
knowledge of quantum mechanics, the basics of many body physics, and computer programming (C/C++
and Python). Experience with parallel computing environments is helpful, but is not essential.