Micro-Intern: Water Resources Engineer/Coding (IAP-Alumni Host)

Code development for user interface for dredged material disposal model. Other environmental consulting opportunities possible as well depending on client needs.

HWR is seeking candidates for a micro-internship that will begin in mid-December and end in late January. The micro-internship will be project based and include from 24 to 40 hours of work per week for the duration of the micro-internship. HWR is offering compensation at $20/hour. HWR can provide office space in Brighton, but remote work is an acceptable alternative assuming the intern can be available for up to five in-person meetings.

The opportunity is open to student who are sophomores or higher and graduate students are eligible to apply. The successful candidate will have a strong background in the fundamentals of water resources including hydrology, hydraulics, hydrodynamics, and sediment transport. Class work or experience in offshore environments (i.e., coastal processes) are particularly valuable.

Class work and/or experience in computer programming are required. The micro-internship project will include programming in Python, but Python experience is not necessarily a pre-requisite for this work.

In the field of water resources, many numerical models that are still in regular use within the industry were written as much as 40 years ago. Access and use of these models is becoming increasingly difficult as computing technology advances. HWR is actively developing a Python-based framework for working with these models. The project’s GitHub repository provides additional information.

The micro-internship project will be to develop a Python-based user interface for the numerical model STFATE. This is an integral part to the overall development project and will build off existing work by HWR.

HWR views this project as critical to its long-term plans. Our industry is very competitive. HWR views innovation within existing practices as a big part of how we differentiate ourselves from competitors. We also see the exposure we can gain with the completion of this project as part of our long-term growth strategy.

HWR plans to make the open-source framework being developed with this work as a resource for modelers. We plan to present it at conferences and multiple contacts in branches of the federal government (e.g., US Army Corps of Engineers and US EPA).