Partners

Invitation to partner with us!

We are passionate about working alongside industry partners and stakeholders to develop solutions to applied problems in conservation and pest management. INSECT NET is eager to cultivate research-based summer internship experiences for our graduate students trainees as a core component of their professional development.

Current INSECT NET partners include:

• Bayer Crop Science
• National Science Foundation's National Ecological Observatory Network
• Nittany Ai Alliance
• Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Institute for Sustainable Agricultural Food and Environmental Science (SAFES)
• Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
• Smithsonian Institution
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services
  

As part of the internship experience, trainees are encouraged to develop an applied, technologically-focused tool to serve stakeholder needs. Initial internship duration spans May - early August through 2028. However, provided the internship host and the trainee are mutually benefitting from the project, these partnerships may continue into the academic year. Examples of possible research internship opportunities may include:

• Building a self-powered, automated insect trap that monitors insect pests or insects of conservation concern in different landscape settings
• Machine learning algorithms to recognize different insect groups/species from user-submitted images
• Digitization of labels from archived museum specimens
• Mapping insect/habitat suitability distributions on spatial and/or temporal scales; predictive modeling of insect distributions
• And more!

If you are interested in sponsoring one of our trainees for a summer internship, please reach out to insectnet@psu.edu for an initial consultation.