15 Robotics Research Summer Programs for High School Students
- Stephen Turban
- 10 minutes ago
- 13 min read
If you are in high school and interested in robotics, summer research programs can help you strengthen your skills and deepen your understanding of the field. Research programs can help you gain exposure to advanced concepts, build connections with researchers, and develop practical and professional skills. You will explore concepts, gain genuine research experience, and learn how scientists work to find explanations for questions in robotics.
Why should I do a robotics summer research program in high school?
In today’s competitive college admissions landscape and job market, seeking out meaningful academic and professional exposure outside of school can help your profile stand out, and research programs can help you do that. Research programs in robotics can give you experience in engineering, coding, and problem-solving that goes well beyond what most high school classes cover. As a participant, you will work on real projects alongside college students, professors, or industry professionals, which can help you figure out whether a career in STEM is the right fit for you. The skills you build in the process, whether in programming, circuit design, or teamwork, can help you in college and beyond.
In this blog post, we have compiled a list of 15 robotics research summer programs for high school students.
If you’re looking for online summer programs, check out our blog here.
Location: Remote! You can participate in the program from anywhere in the world.
Cost: Varies depending on program type; full financial aid available.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: Varies by cohort: summer, winter, fall, or spring. Options range from 12 weeks to 1 year.
Application deadline: Varying deadlines based on cohort
Eligibility: Students currently enrolled in high school who demonstrate a high level of academic achievement
The Lumiere Research Scholar Program is a rigorous research program tailored for high school students. The program offers extensive 1-on-1 research opportunities across a wide range of subject areas for high schoolers to explore. The program pairs you with Ph.D. mentors to work 1-on-1 on an independent research project. At the end of the program, you will have developed an independent research paper! You can choose topics from subjects such as robotics, data science, chemistry, international relations, psychology, physics, economics, computer science, engineering, and more. You can find more details about the application here, and check out students’ reviews of the program here and here.
Location: Multiple locations across the U.S.
Stipend: New participants: $4,000 | Returning participants: $4,500
Acceptance rate/cohort size: 300 students/year
Dates: 8 – 10 weeks over the summer
Application deadline: November 1
Eligibility: Rising 10th- to 12th-grade students and graduating seniors, ages 16 and up by internship start date; applicants must be U.S. citizens. Additional requirements vary by lab.
The U.S. Department of the Navy (DON) offers high school students STEM research experience in a naval lab. Placements span various technical areas, including robotics. You will work in a specialized department to support ongoing naval research under the guidance of federal scientists, contributing to projects such as improving ship systems and logistics through AI and robotics technology and pre-programming free-swimming autonomous underwater vehicles. You will shadow researchers, tour laboratories, attend technical meetings, participate in networking events and team-building workshops, and engage in other professional development opportunities. You will be supported by a primary mentor and other lab staff, learn about professional careers at the Department of the Navy, and gain exposure to the DON’s wide breadth of research. Based on your performance, you may be eligible to continue your internship in the following summers.
Location: Virtual
Cost: Varies depending on program type; financial aid available
Acceptance rate/Cohort size: Selective
Dates: Multiple 12 – 15-week cohorts throughout the year
Application deadline: Rolling enrollment; deadlines vary by cohort: Spring (January), Summer (May), Fall (September), and Winter (November). You can check details and apply to the program here.
Eligibility: High school students; AI Fellowship with Publication and Showcase accepts previous AI Scholars participants or those with some experience working with AI or Python.
Veritas AI, founded and run by Harvard graduate students, offers various online programs for high school students passionate about artificial intelligence. If you are looking to get started with AI, ML, and data science, you can choose the AI Scholars program. Through this 10-session boot camp, you will learn about the fundamentals of AI and data science and get a chance to work on real-world projects. Another track for more advanced students is the AI Fellowship with Publication & Showcase. During this program, you will get a chance to work 1:1 with mentors from top universities on a unique, individual project. A key feature of this program is that it offers you access to the in-house publication team to help you secure publications in high school research journals. You can check out some examples of past projects here and read about a student’s experience in the program here.
Location: NIST campuses in Gaithersburg, MD, and Boulder, CO
Cost/Stipend: None
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly selective; 5.1% acceptance rate for EL, and 10.4% for SHIP overall
Dates: June 22 – August 7
Application deadline: January 26
Eligibility: Current high school juniors and seniors with a minimum 3.0 GPA; applicants must be U.S. citizens and live within 50 miles of the host campus | Preferred interests/coursework for EL applications include computer science, physics and engineering physics, statistics, economics, and mechanical engineering.
The Engineering Laboratory placement in NIST’s Summer High School Internship Program offers a rigorous robotics experience for high schoolers over seven weeks of mentored work. You will contribute to national robotics research, working alongside NIST engineers on projects in fields such as intelligent manufacturing and automated construction processes. Your work will support NIST’s goal of improved standards in measurement science and construction technologies, with implications for natural disaster resilience, smart energy grids, and the national economy. At the end of the program, you will design a research poster and present your work at an intern poster session. NIST scientists will review and judge all student research, offering awards to the top student projects.
Location: Virtual or Johns Hopkins APL, Laurel, MD
Cost/Stipend: None
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Less than 10% applicants accepted/year
Application deadline: February 15
Dates: June 23 – August 21
Eligibility: High school juniors and seniors, ages 15 and up, with a GPA of 2.8 or higher, who are permanent residents of specific regions in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia (check detailed criteria here)
ASPIRE is a summer program that matches you with a mentor at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to work on a technical project aligned with your interests. Placements typically span areas like robotics, engineering, tech, programming, and computer science. You will collaborate with professionals, attend check-ins, and build teamwork skills while working on the assigned project. At the end of ASPIRE, you will participate in a showcase event and present your work as a research poster. You can also continue working on the project during the academic year if you and your mentor agree to collaborate following the summer.
6. Stony Brook University’s Simons Summer Research Program: Civil and Mechanical Engineering Placements
Location: Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
Cost/Stipend: Free; housing costs for residential students: ~$2,450. A stipend is provided upon program completion.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Very selective; ~5% acceptance rate
Dates: June 29 – August 7
Application deadline: February 5
Eligibility: Rising high school seniors, ages 16 and up, who are U.S. citizens/permanent residents; students must be nominated by their high school, and each high school may nominate up to two students.
Simons Summer Research Program is an in-person, university-led STEM research program for high school students. During the program, you will join a Stony Brook University research team and contribute to a project while learning how to work with laboratory tools. You will be assigned to a research project aligning with your interests; robotics-focused options include fabricating shape-morphing structures for robots, developing improved mobile robots for construction processes, and applying generative modeling and machine learning to robotic system design. You will be mentored by a faculty member throughout the program. To supplement your research experience, you will attend weekly faculty lectures on STEM research developments at Stony Brook, tour campus buildings and facilities, and write an academic research paper upon completion of your project. You will deliver a presentation discussing your work at the end of the program.
Location: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Cost/Stipend: None
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: Five to six weeks over the summer; dates vary by project
Application deadline: March 15; applications open on February 15
Eligibility: High school students, ages 16 and up by June 15, enrolled in New Jersey high schools local to Princeton; students must be U.S. citizens currently living in the U.S. Some research placements may have additional requirements.
The Laboratory Learning Program at Princeton University is a highly selective summer program for Princeton-area high school students that offers various STEM research opportunities. You will specify your two top choices from a list of available faculty-led research opportunities that vary yearly; if admitted, you’ll serve as a research assistant to the faculty member leading your assigned project. You may work with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department to develop adaptive movement strategies for robots operating in muddy terrain, program multi-agent robotic learning strategies, and optimize complex coordination through robot physics research. You may work as the sole high school intern or collaborate with one or two peers, building connections with your Princeton faculty mentor and other members of the research team. As each project typically admits only one or two students, your experience will be personalized to your specific interests within the project. You will finish the program by writing a report on your research experience and outcomes.
Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Cost: $75 application fee
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Very selective; ~80 – 100 students/year and ~2.5% acceptance rate
Dates: June 28 – August 8
Application deadline: December 10
Eligibility: Rising high school seniors who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in STEM and leadership in their school/community; RSI recommends standardized testing scores of 740+ in Math and 700+ in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing for the PSAT, or 33+ in Math and 34+ in Verbal sections for the ACT.
RSI offers six weeks of mentored research and training to high-achieving high school students in STEM fields, including robotics, math, physics, neuroscience, and more. You will begin the program with a week of STEM and humanities classwork led by professors from MIT and other top universities. You will spend five weeks working on an independent project with mentorship from a researcher from MIT or another Boston institution. You will learn research basics from lab protocols to scientific presentations and communication. You will also attend a guest speaker series featuring leaders from industry and academia who will share insights into their work and diverse career paths in STEM research. At the end of the program, you will write a research paper on your project and deliver a presentation to the RSI cohort and a panel of expert judges from academia and industry. If your work is among the top five presentations and/or papers, you will receive an RSI research award.
Location: Multiple U.S. locations, including Air Force bases, laboratories, and the Pentagon.
Stipend: $506.80/week; some locations offer higher stipends and travel coverage. Check details here.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: Vary by site and internship; typically a minimum of 8 weeks, with most internships running 10–12 weeks in the summer, spring, and fall.
Application deadline: Summer: January 10 | Fall/Spring: Not specified
Eligibility: Upper-level high school students, undergraduates, and graduate students who are U.S. citizens pursuing and/or planning to pursue a STEM degree and are able to obtain Secret Security Clearance upon acceptance.
The ARFL Scholars Program, offered by the Department of the Air Force, is a paid internship that provides high schoolers with research experience at federal facilities. You will apply to be considered for up to three projects of choice, with available tracks varying each internship term based on laboratory openings and needs. Potential research areas include developing motion planners and robotic arms at the Robotic Orbital Control Lab, or implementing novel algorithms for autonomous multi-agent robots at the Local Intelligent Networked Collaborative Satellites (LINCS) Laboratory. You will work under the mentorship of senior Air Force scientists, learn about federal research and development processes, explore future career paths, and undergo training in advanced programming and engineering skills. You can return in subsequent years to continue working on your project area, making this program a potential long-term opportunity.
Location: Remote or MIT, Cambridge, MA
Cost: Online pre-requisite course: Free | Summer Program: Free for families with incomes of <$200,000/year; $2,400 otherwise
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Online course: Open Enrollment | Summer Program: Selective
Dates: Online course: February – June (self-paced) | Summer Institute: Four weeks over the summer
Application deadline: Online Course: Open registration ending in mid-January | Summer Program: March 30
Eligibility: High school students in grades 9 – 11 residing and attending high school in the U.S.; course-specific prerequisites vary.
MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) offers research and academic exploration opportunities to high school students interested in science and engineering, combining an online course with a summer program. If you are interested in conducting robotics research over the summer, you can choose from tracks like Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing, Remote Sensing for Disaster Response, Unmanned Air System-Synthetic Aperture Radar, and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. You will first complete an online course on a self-paced timeline; coursework varies by program, but typically spans topics in programming, math, data analysis, and specialized course-specific material. During the summer program, you will continue learning advanced academic and research skills while conducting individual and/or group research, typically culminating in a final project. For robotics-focused summer programs, projects might include programming an autonomous vehicle to navigate an underwater obstacle course, designing an unmanned aerial vehicle with radar imaging capabilities, or an independently chosen topic in the field.
Location: UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Merced, and UC Santa Cruz, CA
Cost: $5,518 + $46 non-refundable application fee; financial aid is available.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective; ~150 – 200 students/campus and 20 – 25 students/cluster
Dates: July 5 – 31 or August 1, depending on your campus placement
Application deadline: February 6
Eligibility: Rising 9th – 12th graders and graduating seniors who are California residents; a minimum 3.5 GPA is recommended. Specific clusters may have additional prerequisites.
COSMOS is a summer STEM program for California high schoolers offering dozens of unique research subject tracks called “clusters” across six University of California campuses. You can choose from a wide range of robotics research clusters, such as Fundamentals of Machine Learning in Robotics at UCSC, Computers in Biophysics & Robotics at UC Davis, and Robot Inventors at UCSD. You will complete specialized coursework within your cluster, led by UC professors, to learn the underlying science, technical skills, and real-world applications of your chosen subfield of robotics. You will also work on a research project that may focus on topics such as low-power machine learning, programming portable robots, neural network image classification, reinforcement learning for robotic control, and more. Depending on your cluster, you may be assigned additional assignments, such as papers or presentations.
Location: Utah NeuroRobotics Lab, Salt Lake City, UT
Cost: $4,000; cost may be higher based on start/end dates.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Very selective; 1 or 2 student/year
Dates: ~2 months over the summer; exact dates determined between students and mentors
Application deadline: May 1
Eligibility: High school students interested in attending the University of Utah, and/or students from diverse backgrounds, prioritized; students who have completed STEM coursework at the AP/IB level and have prior experience with software, mechanical, and hardware design (e.g., programming, 3D printing, and microcontrollers) typically qualify.
The Utah NeuroRobotics Lab offers a two-month robotics summer program for one or two students each year, providing them with a personalized research experience under the mentorship of laboratory faculty. You will develop a project aligned with the lab’s current research areas, which focus on merging biological and artificial neural networks with bionic devices to study and treat neurological disorders. Your project might involve developing an augmented reality system, building multi-articulate bionic arms, or designing diagnostic equipment for neuromuscular rehabilitation. You will work within a team composed of academic and industry researchers in neuroscience, computer science, and mechanical, biomedical, and electrical engineering, building connections and expertise across an array of disciplines. Former student projects have qualified for the International Science Fair, have published first-author research manuscripts, and have presented at national conferences.
13. Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP) @ George Mason University College of Science
Location: Remote or George Mason University campuses in Fairfax, Manassas, and Arlington, VA; placements may be available at other nearby research institutions.
Cost: $1,299 + $25 application fee; financial aid available
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: June 18 – August 12
Application deadline: February 15
Eligibility: Current high school students and undergraduates, ages 15 and up for remote or computer lab internships, or ages 16 and up for in-person/hybrid “wet-lab” internships; some projects have additional academic requirements.
ASSIP pairs high school and college students with university faculty members to develop research projects while building professional skills for academia and industry. You will select up to three prospective mentors from an annually rotating list of project areas; once paired with a mentor, you will develop a project contributing to their ongoing research. Robotics research opportunities are available in tracks such as Geography and Geoinformation Science, Forensic Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Bioengineering. Your project might focus on applying robotics to intelligent spatial systems, developing drones for 3D crime scene mapping, rehabilitation robotics and exoskeletons, or human-robot interaction. You will gain professional development and networking opportunities through career forums, training in scientific writing, communication development, and university-level research techniques. At the end of your internship, you will deliver a presentation on your research and earn three transferable college credits.
Location: University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
Cost: $5,675 (commuter) | $13,274 (residential); scholarships available
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: June 15 – July 31
Application deadline: March 9
Eligibility: High school students in the 10th or 11th grade with a minimum 3.80 academic weighted GPA
UCSB’s RMP offers a six-week opportunity to engage in university-level research under the guidance of a faculty member, postdoc, or graduate student. The program begins with a virtual orientation, where you will explore available projects and meet your mentor before starting hands-on work on campus. You will have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of disciplines, including robotics-focused tracks like computer science, tech, and engineering. You will spend the majority of your time on your research, lab work, and data analysis. You will also write a research paper and present your findings at a formal symposium. The program also offers the opportunity to earn 8 university credits by participating in two courses covering research techniques, methods, scientific writing, and research presentation.
Location: UC San Diego's San Diego Supercomputer Center, La Jolla, CACost: $2,000 registration fee; full and partial scholarships are available.
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Not specified
Dates: June 8 – July 31
Application deadline: March 15
Eligibility: 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are Southern California residents, at least 16 years old, and have a minimum GPA of 3.0.
In this eight-week program, you will work on a real computational research project at UC San Diego's San Diego Supercomputer Center, paired with a UCSD faculty or postdoctoral mentor. Projects span robotics and related areas such as AI/ML, computational science, and computing. You will work in pairs or small groups alongside peers with similar interests, learning how to formulate hypotheses, run computational experiments, and analyze results. Most projects require 15–20 hours of work per week; however, you can set your schedule directly with your mentor. You will also attend bi-weekly lunchtime research talks and participate in regular lab meetings and group discussions. At the end of the program, you will create a scientific poster summarizing your research and present it at a closing event.
Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a Ph.D. student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program in which students work one-on-one with a mentor to develop an independent research paper.