Internships
Exciting learning opportunities at the edge of Business and Science
Fluorescent microscopes are a key instrument for scientific learning in the health and life sciences. Image restoration and analysis are crucial tools to extract knowledge from the microscopic data. SVI is an internationally recognized specialist in image restoration and we work at the edge of scientific developments to enable easy and reliable image analysis for the life sciences.
Traineeships take place at our headquarters in Hilversum, conveniently located near Hilversum Sportpark train station and close to the highway exit. The minimum duration for internships is 4 months. We also have a limited number of short projects of ~2 month duration available.
what is it
As an intern scientific consultancy you translate the needs of leading international researchers to the insights SVI's products offer. You will obtain in-depth knowledge of 1) SVI's high-tech products and 2) the research field associated of your topic. This internship prepares you for the Scientific Consultant career track within SVI.
for whom
Master students with a background in:
- Science and Business
- Life Sciences with a focus on microscopy
- Science Communication
Microscopy Projects
Lightsheet deconvolution and restoration in collaboration with Kapitein lab / UU.
Minimum duration: 5 months
For students with a background in molecular biology and microscopy
Lightsheet microscopy is an advanced imaging technique where two objectives are used, one for illumination and one for detection. Owing to the unique orthogonal orientation, this method can image fast at high resolution, while deep light penetration. This combination of properties make it uniquely suitable for imaging large samples, such as tissues, organoids or expanded cells. Yet, lightsheet suffers from limited sheet thickness, as well as skewing and stitching issues. This causes experimental complications as well as deteriorate the quality of the resulting data.
In this project, you will apply the Huygens’ software deconvolution and image restoration to overcome these barriers and develop a protocol for light-sheet data acquisition optimal for deconvolution and restoration.
- As the resolution is optimal at the light-sheet waist, many users discard a section of the range of the lightsheet, thus increasing photo-toxicity and acquisition time. Deconvolution can extend the useful range of the sheet, enabling faster and gentler imaging.
- Several lightsheet types, such as gaussian- or lattice- lightsheet exist. You will investigate the properties of each type.
- Chromatic aberrations of both lower- and higher order are always present in microscopic images. Correction is crucial for any type of multi-channel comparisons. You will investigate the severity, properties and correction. https://svi.nl/Chromatic-Aberration-Corrector-Software
- Lightsheet performed at a 45° angle a popular method, but results in skewed images. You will test and apply the Huygens de kewing tool.
- Samples that can extend the Field-of-view of the microscope can still be imaged using multiple tiles. Here, the tiles need to be stitched together at high quality to avoid any stitching artifacts.
- optional You will test the fusing of multiple image views in a single high-resolution overview view. Depends on time and availability.
- You will test for general user-friendliness & speed: It needs to be manageable for non-expert users, in a reasonable amount of time, on a reasonably powerful pc.
Science, Science and Communication Projects
1. The Huygens Imaging Academy(HIA) is SVI's online wiki database aimed at spreading knowledge on image analysis. In this internship, you will expand and improve the HIA by 1) creating figures and accompanying texts to communicate scientific meaning 2) analyze and plot existing datasets to create new content 3) synthesize existing pages to increase clarity. Level: Master. Topic: science, science and communication
short projects
1. RNA FISH review existing literature and develop your own analysis method using published data and the Huygens Software. Sub-topics: 1) sample preparation 2) imaging modality 3) segmentation of imaging data 4) extraction of quantitative RNA expression 5) post processing 6) impact of result.
2. Single Molecule Tracking review existing literature and develop your own analysis method using published data and the Huygens Software. Sub-topics: 1) types of data acquisition 2) extraction of tracks from raw data 3) post processing 4) impact of result. *Project has been taken.*
3. Image Analysis in Neuroscience review existing literature and develop your own analysis method using published data and the Huygens Software. Sub-topics: 1) which analysis methods are used 2) how often they are used 3) impact of result 4) a case study on an exemplary dataset.
4. Quantifying organelles in batch review existing literature and develop your own analysis method using published data and the Huygens Software. Sub-topics: 1) Types of data acquisition 2) automated extraction of features 3) feature classification 4) impact of the result. *Project has been taken.*
Life science and business Internships
About SVI
Scientific Volume Imaging (SVI) is a world leader in fluorescent microscopy image analysis. Fluorescence microscopy is a work-horse in the ongoing life science revolution. Yet microscopic images are meaningless without the proper tools to restore and analyze them. Having intimate knowledge of technological drivers and key players in the market, SVI is poised to play an increasingly important role in this growing market.
Internship topic
In this internship, you will be focussing on developing commercial opportunities in the developmental biology market. Developmental biology studies life at the level of tissues and organs, or even whole organisms. This market includes 1) organoids and organ-on-a-chip application, 2) zebrafish, drosophila and C. Elegans imaging, 3) whole tissue imaging applications. More than other research segments, this market yields novel insights that are highly applicable in the pharmaceutical industry. Due to the large size of the images, this market has a lot of demand for technological advanced images processing, which SVI is uniquely able to provide.
Daily activities
You will be supporting one of our experienced scientific imaging consultants in their daily sales and marketing activities. This includes 1) generating sales opportunities by means of contacting new or existing prospects, 2) sharpening your value proposition by understanding the specific needs of your segments and 3) generating sales and marketing materials that are in support thereof. In general, we look to tune the internship to the applicants unique talents and are open to initiatives from their side. As you will be directly supporting one of our consultants, this ensures a good supervision and diversity of tasks.
Requirements
- HBO or MSc University students
- Prior experience in life sciences and preferably in fluorescence microscopy
- Interest in Sales and Marketing
Job opportunities after this internship
This internships prepares you for the Scientific Imaging Concultant track within SVI. SVI is actively recruiting Scientific Imaging Consultants and a succesful internship may lead to a job offer when we see a good match with SVI's needs.
In general this internship provides you with a thorough skillset for commercial and business roles in the life science industry.
Danielle was one of the students doing a Sales / Marketing internship at SVI and is currently one of our Account Manager/ Imaging Specialists.
Our current Development assignments are intended for Master students (e.g. Scientific Programming with Mathematical or Physics background) and for Bachelor students with a Minor in computational sciences, both from within the EU.
If you have a related topic that is not specifically mentioned in the list below, send us a short description so that we can see whether it fits with our interest. Traineeships related to the topics mentioned below can start immediately.
1. Mathematical morphology: convex hull
language: C
level: Masters
2. Modeling of shading patterns in SPIM microscopy
language: C/Tcl
level: Bachelors/Masters
3. 'Casual' web-based colocalization analysis
language: Tcl/PHP
level: Informatics, Bachelors
4. AI, Deep learning Object Tracking and Object Analysis
language: C/CUDA
level: Masters
5. SFP volume rendering on GPUs
language: C/CUDA
level: Masters
6. Semi-interactive, web-based PSF distiller
language: PHP/JavaScript/Tcl
level: Bachelors/Masters
7. CUDA implementation of image processing operations
language: C, CUDA
level: Bachelors/Masters
Interested? Send your CV and motivation to jobs at svi.nl, more contact information here