Internships

Through the UNCOVER internship scheme, students and graduates within UNCOVER were given the opportunity to develop their skills as reviewers, and take on new responsibilities as mentors, workshop facilitators and review coordinators.

The pilot scheme, which took place during spring-summer 2021, was open to students and graduates with experience working on UNCOVER reviews. Following a competitive application process, seven interns were appointed: Yijia Dong, Lara Goodwin, Prerna Krishan, Durga Kulkarni, Rima Nundy, Wei Xu and Xiaomeng Zhang.

Throughout the four months of their internship, our interns delivered an impressive series of reviews, on Long Covid, the Infectious Dose of COVID-19, Student Mental Health during the pandemic, and the effect of Alcohol on Compliance with Regulations, on behalf of or in collaboration with a range of external partners and decision-makers. Following the usual UNCOVER model, the review teams were a mix of more experienced reviewers (interns) and newer student volunteers, with the interns mentoring and supporting newer team members.

As well as achieving high quality public health evidence synthesis, our interns also gained and demonstrated their skills in effective teamwork and team leadership,  delivering to very tight deadlines, and working effectively with external partners. 

All UNCOVER volunteers have the opportunity to apply their public health training in a variety of real-world settings, complementing their academic learning and contributing to their development as creative problem solvers, critical thinkers, effective contributors and skilled communicators, in accordance with the University of Edinburgh Graduate Attributes. We aimed to ensure that the internship scheme would allow volunteers, who have already demonstrated their commitment to UNCOVER's work, to further develop those skills in roles of increasing responsibility; providing interns with skills and experience that will stand them in good stead as they pursue their academic or professional careers, and which contribute to employability in an increasingly challenging job market.

Future Internships

In the 2021 pilot scheme, UNCOVER offered six Research Assistant Internships and one Literature Searching Support Internship, each for approximately 7 - 10 hours per week for the four month period.

UNCOVER hopes to run an annual internship scheme, targeted at students and graduates who have some experience of working on UNCOVER reviews, who are looking for the next step in terms of developing their skills and experience. We will be applying for funding to enable the internship scheme to continue. 

Meet the Team (2021 Interns)