About

The Aspirnaut Summer Research Internship is a free, six-week residential research program for Michigan high school juniors, hosted by the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute in Ann Arbor. Running June 14–July 24, 2026, it places 6–10 interns directly in active U-M research labs across life sciences, molecular and cellular biology, environmental science, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and neuroscience. Housing, meals, and a paid stipend are all provided — there is no cost to participate. No prior research experience is required.

Each intern is matched with a U-M faculty lab based on their stated scientific interests and works alongside faculty, postdocs, and graduate students on a self-directed research project contributing to live, ongoing work. The program includes weekly professional development: college advising, SAT preparation, essay writing workshops through U-M's Sweetland Writing Center, and networking with scientists across one of the most research-intensive campuses in the country. Interns present their findings publicly at the end of the six weeks. Undergraduate resident assistants — many of them Aspirnaut alumni — live with the cohort in U-M dorms throughout the program, providing peer mentorship alongside faculty guidance. The program is explicitly designed to recruit from communities across Michigan that are geographically or socioeconomically distant from major research institutions, including rural towns across the Upper Peninsula, Flint, Detroit, and small cities across the state; students from over 30 Michigan cities and towns have participated to date.

The program's alumni outcomes speak to the depth of its impact: one former intern contributed to two published manuscripts as an undergraduate, then enrolled in the Yale Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD program. For a Michigan junior from anywhere in the state — rural or urban, under-resourced or not — Aspirnaut is one of the most substantive and accessible pathways into authentic university-level research available, and among the most distinctive free research programs in the country.