11/17/2022
The IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute was launched in 2021 as a $200-million, ten-year collaboration among IBM, UIUC, and the State of Illinois. Now, that partnership is facilitating an unusual new “externship” program that allows UIUC graduate students to work on their own thesis research while being physically located at IBM and interacting with IBM mentors.
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The IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute was launched in 2021 as a $200-million, ten-year collaboration among IBM, UIUC, and the State of Illinois. Now, that partnership is facilitating an unusual new “externship” program that allows UIUC graduate students to work on their own thesis research while being physically located at IBM and interacting with IBM mentors.
These visits to IBM are expected to take place mostly in summers, much like traditional internships. The first cohort of 16 students participated in summer 2022.
Vivian Anthony Gray, the Assistant Director of the Institute, took a leading role in arranging the pilot offering. He noted that a major attraction of the externships, in contrast to traditional internships, is that they offer industry experience without delaying progress towards graduation.
He said the visiting-student program offers “the ability to be in industry while you are working on your own graduate work, as opposed to putting aside for a semester your graduate work, and having to focus on an internship as work which has no relationship to your graduate work.”
Even better, said Gray, “You might very well end up being offered a position at IBM!”
IBM Research’s Director of Distributed Cloud Management, Daby Sow, says that the program is beneficial for IBM as well as the students. “This externship is an ideal vehicle to forge longstanding relations not just with world-class faculty but also with excellent students, while pursuing important research questions with a long horizon.”
Deming Chen, who is an Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering in ECE and the Co-lead for the Hybrid Cloud Thrust in the institute, interacted with all 13 of the 2022 externs who were working on hybrid cloud topics. “One important advantage for this unique externship program is that our student externs can continue to do research during [the] summer without interruption, publish their research results sooner, and generate research impact sooner, while receiving the benefit of collaborating with their industry mentors at IBM closely,” said Chen. “Also, during the externship, they are able to access data and various computing and storage resources at IBM to accelerate their research progress.”
The externships’ role as part of longer-term relationships between students and IBM also offers value as an opportunity to tackle complex research questions without the time limits imposed by normal internships.
2022 participant Limin Yang, who is a Ph.D. student advised by Gang Wang in Computer Science, praised the externship experience. “I think the most valuable part is that I had the opportunity to discuss my topic with several IBM researchers extensively,” he said. “The discussion pushed me to think more about my research and make it sharper.”
Scott Smith, an ECE Ph.D. student advised by Deming Chen, expressed similar enthusiasm about his summer at IBM. “This externship experience provided me with the opportunity to learn about some of the most important research problems in an industry setting,” he said. “This broadened my perspective and helped me better focus my research efforts on projects that can have maximal impact... I was able to meet several great IBM researchers and work with them extensively. These connections have been and will continue to be invaluable as I continue my Ph.D. studies.”
“I would highly encourage other Ph.D. students and aspiring researchers to pursue this or similar opportunities,” added Smith.
Gray explained that the program is primarily aimed at graduate students who are already working on IBM-supported research at UIUC, but that there are two other routes to participation: IBM’s diversity and inclusion initiative, which is aimed at attracting students who don’t necessarily even need to be engineering majors; and IBM’s entrepreneurship program.
Gray said that the current plan is to continue offering the externship program, but that the format may evolve to ensure that students have the best possible opportunity to engage in challenging research in partnership with a key industry leader. As plans develop, information will be posted on the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute website.