01Computer Science
Algorithms, systems, and computational methods, including work that leans heavily on implementation and measurement.
Algorithms and complexity · Machine learning · Software systems · Quantum computing · Data and simulation
Qurbit Research / Program
One program, and the details of how it runs.
There are no tiers, tracks, or levels. A student joins a project, works on a defined piece of it for a cycle, and finishes with something written.
- Fee
- None
- Time
- 5–8 hours per week
- Cycle
- 16 weeks
- Format
- Remote
1Who can apply
Anyone in high school or college. We have taken students who had written code for years and students who had never opened a terminal, and the second group has not done noticeably worse.What predicts a good cycle is whether someone keeps showing up in week nine, when the interesting part is over and the careful part has started.
Be accurate about your availability. Five hours a week that actually happen are worth more to a project than twelve that were promised in September and gone by October, and we would rather plan around the real number.
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Enrollment | In high school, on a gap year, or in an undergraduate program. |
| Prior research | Not required. About half of accepted students have none. |
| Technical skill | Useful, not required. Tell us what you know so we place you accurately. |
| Availability | 5–8 hours per week, for one cycle. |
| Location | Anywhere. Check-ins are scheduled around your time zone. |
| Fee | None, at any stage. |
2Areas
You choose one when you apply. The specific project is assigned at matching, based on what has room and where your interests would be useful.
02Finance
Markets, risk, and quantitative methods, with an emphasis on questions that can be tested against real data.
Quantitative modeling · Market microstructure · Risk and portfolio analysis · Financial data science · Behavioral finance
03Medical
Health, biology, and clinical questions, approached through data analysis and careful study design.
Biomedical data analysis · Public health studies · Computational biology · Medical imaging methods · Clinical research design
3The cycle, week by week
The schedule below is the default. Projects drift by a week or two in either direction, and a mentor will tell you early if yours is going to.
| Weeks | Phase | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Orientation | You meet your mentor, read into the project, and agree on the piece you own. Scope gets cut here, which is the cheapest time to cut it. |
| 3–6 | Reading and setup | You find out what has already been tried, and get your data, environment, or protocol working before you rely on any of it. |
| 7–12 | Experiments and analysis | The bulk of the work. Weekly check-ins exist mostly to catch dead ends in week eight instead of week eleven. |
| 13–15 | Writing | Methods, figures, limitations, and a draft that a stranger to the project can follow. |
| 16 | Review | Your mentor reads the finished work, and you decide together whether it goes anywhere. |
4What a mentor does
Every placement has one named person accountable for it. They set the scope, review your methods before you commit six weeks to them, read your drafts closely enough to mark them up, and tell you when something is not strong enough to submit.This last one is the duty that paid programs tend to skip, because the customer does not enjoy hearing it.
The check-in is weekly and it is short. Most of them are twenty minutes of looking at what you did and deciding what happens next. Between those, you are working on your own, which is the part that takes getting used to.
5How we read applications
The two written answers carry most of the weight. We are reading for whether you can state a problem clearly and say what you do not yet know about it. Neither of those requires polish, and a paragraph that admits confusion in specific terms is a better signal than one that hides it in good sentences.Also: write it yourself. A statement that reads like a model wrote it is easy to spot and does not help you.
After that we look at availability, and then at whether an open seat suits you. The last part is outside your control. Applicants we would have taken get declined every cycle because nothing was open in their area, and those applications are worth resubmitting next time.