Register your interest using the form below, with your field, skills, availability and what you'd like to get from a placement. If your programme includes a placement requirement, tell us the dates.

We'll talk to our mission teams about whether there's a project that suits your skills and timing. Placements depend on a team having the right work and the capacity to support you, so we can't guarantee one, but we'll tell you honestly where we get to.

You'll stay on your university contract and stipend, as Nesta doesn't directly employ placement students. We'll sign an agreement with your university, which they'll usually be familiar with. For sensitive projects, we may also ask you to sign a confidentiality agreement.

We'll set up your start date, onboarding, equipment and system access, and introduce you to your team. Allow at least a few weeks between agreeing a placement and starting.

• Funding: If you receive a stipend from your university, we expect this to continue. We are not able to offer additional payment as part of this placement.
• Expenses: Nesta doesn't generally cover travel or other expenses, so these should be covered by your institution. Please check with your university before applying.
• Location and working pattern: We can support hybrid working arrangements, but currently require students to travel to our London office at the start and potentially a few other points throughout your placement to collect IT equipment and connect with the team that will host you. You will need to be based at a UK university and have a valid student visa if you are not a UK national.
• Intellectual property: Nesta will own the IP in the work you produce during your placement, and we'll agree this with your university up front. You keep ownership of your existing research.

I am part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science at UCL, so doing a placement is part of my PhD programme. Nesta came to UCL and pitched this project. I was very interested in undertaking a placement in sustainability, which is what drew me to Nesta. I also liked the idea of joining the team as a junior data scientist, rather than this being a separate project, in order to get real experience in working in industry. I was also very interested in working in a multidisciplinary team and learning more about policy.

I worked as a core member of the local heat planning tool team, in the role of junior data scientist. When I joined the team, there was a prototype of the planning tool for a single local authority. I worked on refining the prototype and on scaling to further local authorities across Great Britain. This included adding new data layers, increasing automation in the pipeline, testing and evaluation and adding new features in the pipeline using geospatial data science techniques and machine learning modelling.

There are some aspects which are very similar about working in applied research compared with academia, like the data analysis side. But there were also many differences, for example there was a very big emphasis on software QA and code reviews. I would present my work in a much less finished state than I would in academia, and there was more of an emphasis on producing a minimum viable piece of work, getting feedback from stakeholders and then iterating on this.

I would really recommend undertaking a placement at Nesta as part of your PhD! I gained really valuable insight into life in industry and learnt lots of new skills in data science and machine learning which I can take back to my research. I also enjoyed learning about areas outside of my research, like geospatial data science, energy policy and working with other members of the team in different roles such as designers and product leads.