Design Strategy Intern, NASA's Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing (PCC) Program
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) develops technologies that enable science and human exploration goals. STMD supports the space economy by working with industry and academia to ensure a robust national space technology engine to meet national needs. STMD’s Early Stage Innovations and Partnerships (ESIP) Portfolio empowers a community of innovators pioneering aerospace research and transformative technology ventures to enable NASA’s mission and invigorate our economic future. As one of the programs under the ESIP Portfolio, the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing (PCC) Program conducts and promotes the use of open innovation tools including prize competitions, challenges, and crowdsourcing projects to advance NASA’s mission and enhance the agency’s connections with the public.
The PCC Program is seeking an energetic, creative, self-starting college student (sophomore, junior, or senior) to help us develop new strategies to conduct multi-million-dollar prize competitions (“Centennial Challenges”) to help overcome NASA's biggest technological hurdles!
The intern will aid the PCC Program team in creating a process to identify and select topics that could be suitable for a major prize competition. Depending on how quickly the process design effort goes, the intern may help in implementing the process. The experience will allow the intern to better understand NASA technology priorities and the value of public prize competitions in innovation, while helping him/her/them hone skills such as team collaboration, strategic thinking, and partnership development. The intern may also be invited to support other PCC Program needs in areas such as data collection and analysis, outreach, and project brainstorming.