Pawsey Summer Internship - paid HPC/AI internship + Setonix supercomputer allocation
Source: https://pawsey.org.au/supercomputing/training/summer-internships
Description
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+ 1 The Pawsey Summer Internship Program is a 12-week paid internship (late November to mid-February, with a 2-week shutdown over the end-of-year holidays) at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth, Western Australia. Interns work on real AI/ML/HPC research projects under a domain expert supervisor, with allocations on Setonix — currently Australia's most powerful supercomputer — and a 1-week residential Pre-Internship Workshop that teaches Linux, MPI/OpenMP, GPU programming with HIP, and Pawsey's tooling. This is one of the easiest ways for an Australian student to get hands-on time with a top-30 global supercomputer and get paid to do it.
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+ 7 This is a two-sided program — Researchers/Supervisors propose projects first, then Students apply to those projects.
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+ 11 1. Wait for the Call for Students to open. The annual cycle for the upcoming summer typically runs:
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+ 12 • Call for Projects — opens around April–May, closes around mid-June
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+ 13 • Call for Students — opens around July–August, closes around late August / early September
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+ 14 • Selection + offers — September–October
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+ 15 • Pre-Internship Workshop — mid-November
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+ 16 • Internship runs — late November to mid-February
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+ 17 2. Browse the published list of accepted projects on the Pawsey Summer Internship page.
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+ 18 3. Submit your application via the Pawsey portal. You'll need:
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+ 19 • Academic transcript
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+ 20 • CV / resume
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+ 21 • A short statement of interest naming up to 3 preferred projects
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+ 22 • Evidence of your full-time Australian working rights (citizenship, PR, or appropriate visa)
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+ 23 4. Shortlisted candidates may be interviewed by the supervising researcher.
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+ 24 5. If accepted, you'll be matched to a project, sign a Pawsey internship agreement, and onboard for the November bootcamp.
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+ 25
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+ 27
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+ 28 • Submit a project via the Call for Projects in April–June. Pawsey runs a co-funding model: Pawsey contributes part of the stipend, the host project / institution contributes the rest. Projects without co-funding are not selected.
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+ 29
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+ 30 Important:
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+ 31 • Today is 2026-05-09 — the 2026/27 cycle Call for Projects is the relevant one to track right now. Check the page above for exact 2026/27 dates as they're published.
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+ 32 • The internship is in-person in Perth, WA by default. Remote/hybrid options have been offered in past cycles for students based at partner institutions outside WA — confirm with your supervisor.
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+ 33 • The project pool is curated by Pawsey's research staff and partners (CSIRO, AAO, ICRAR, Curtin, UWA, Monash, etc.) — you can't propose your own project as a student.
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+ 39 RequirementDetail
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+ 40 EnrollmentEnrolled at an Australian higher education institution at time of application
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+ 41 Level2nd / 3rd year undergraduate, Honours, Master's by research, or PhD
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+ 42 Work rightsFull-time working rights in Australia for the entire 12-week period (citizen, PR, or visa with unrestricted work rights). International students on standard 482/500 study visas with the 48-hr/fortnight cap are typically ineligible unless they're on a research-track visa with full work rights.
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+ 43 DisciplineAny discipline whose project benefits from HPC / AI / ML / data — astronomy, bioinformatics, climate, fluid dynamics, materials, NLP, computer vision, etc.
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+ 44 SkillsSome prior Linux + Python (or C/C++/Fortran) experience strongly recommended. The Pre-Internship Workshop fills the rest.
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+ 45
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+ 46 This program is not open to students at non-Australian universities, working professionals, or applicants without AU work rights.
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+ 52 • Paid stipend for the full 12-week period. Pawsey doesn't publish a single fixed dollar amount because it's co-funded with the host researcher — historical reporting has placed it in the AUD ~$8K–$12K range for the 12 weeks (varies by year, project tier, and supervising institution top-up). Confirm the current rate with the project supervisor when you apply.
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+ 53 • Allocation on Setonix (CPU + GPU partitions) for the duration of the project.
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+ 54 • 1-week Pre-Internship Workshop in mid-November — Linux, supercomputing concepts, MPI / OpenMP, HIP / ROCm GPU programming, Slurm, Pawsey filesystems, profiling, visualisation. Travel + accommodation typically covered for non-WA participants.
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+ 55 • Final symposium at the end of the cycle — you present your work; selected projects get publication / poster opportunities at conferences such as eResearch Australasia or SC.
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+ 56 • Co-author credit on resulting papers / blog posts where applicable.
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+ 57 • Pawsey alumni network — prior interns regularly transition into Pawsey staff roles, PhD positions, or industry HPC/AI roles.
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+ 63 Setonix is an HPE Cray EX system in Perth, Australia's most powerful supercomputer (~50 PFLOPs theoretical peak, top-30 globally at launch).
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+ 64
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+ 65 ComponentDetail
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+ 66 ArchitectureHPE Cray EX with Slingshot-11 200 Gb/s interconnect
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+ 67 CPU partition~200,000 AMD EPYC "Milan" cores across ~1,600 nodes
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+ 68 GPU partition192 GPU nodes, each with 8 logical AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs (4 physical MI250X cards × 2 GCDs) and 1× AMD EPYC "Trento" 64-core CPU
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+ 69 GPU memory128 GB HBM2e per MI250X card (64 GB per logical GPU); ~3.2 TB/s memory bandwidth per card
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+ 70 GPU node RAM256 GB (standard) or 512 GB (38 high-memory nodes)
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+ 71 GPU peak~383 TFLOPs FP16 per MI250X; ~35 PFLOPs total in the GPU partition
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+ 72 Software stackROCm + HIP (not CUDA), Cray PE, Slurm, Singularity / Apptainer containers, PyTorch + JAX builds for ROCm, plus standard HPC libs
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+ 73 StorageLustre scratch + project filesystems, plus Acacia S3 object store for long-term data
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+ 74
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+ 75 Heads-up for AI/ML interns: the GPU partition is AMD, not NVIDIA, so you'll be running ROCm rather than CUDA. PyTorch and JAX both have ROCm builds and Pawsey provides containers, but expect to spend some onboarding time porting CUDA-only code. The Pre-Internship Workshop covers HIP and ROCm explicitly.
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+ 77 See Setonix on Pawsey and the Setonix GPU Partition Quick Start.
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+ 82
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+ 83 • Apply early to multiple projects. Some popular projects (LLM-related, astronomy ML) get many more applicants than spots. Listing 2–3 projects in your statement strongly improves your odds.
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+ 84 • Talk to the supervisor before submitting. A short "hi, I'm interested in your project, here's why" email to the listed researcher massively improves your chances of being shortlisted — this is normal and encouraged.
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+ 85 • Visa / work rights issue is a hard gate. International students on standard study visas with the 48-hr/fortnight cap will not pass eligibility for the full-time 12-week internship.
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+ 86 • GPU code is AMD/HIP, not NVIDIA/CUDA. If your project uses PyTorch or JAX you're fine (ROCm builds work), but custom CUDA kernels won't run as-is. Plan time for porting.
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+ 87 • Stipend is taxable Australian income — if you're an international student or first-time worker, sort out your TFN early.
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+ 88 • Co-funding is real. If the supervising researcher couldn't secure their share of the stipend, the project is dropped. Don't be surprised if a project disappears between Call for Projects and Call for Students.
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+ 94 • Pawsey Expert Help Desk — free for any Australian researcher with a Pawsey allocation.
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+ 95 • Pawsey Training — free workshops (HIP, MPI, Singularity, AI on Setonix) open to anyone, including international participants in many cases.
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+ 96 • Partner Allocation Scheme — free Setonix time for researchers at Pawsey partner institutions (Curtin, UWA, Murdoch, ECU, CSIRO, AAO).
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+ 97 • Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) — the national peer-reviewed allocation scheme for larger Setonix allocations; open to AU-based researchers.
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+ 98 • EuroHPC LUMI / NCI Gadi — if you're a researcher needing more compute, NCI Australia (Gadi) and EuroHPC LUMI are the other major HPC options for AU and EU researchers respectively.
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+ 102 Sources:
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+ 103 • Pawsey Summer Internships (official)
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+ 104 • Pawsey Summer Internship — Education & Outreach wiki
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+ 105 • Setonix system overview
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+ 106 • Setonix General Information — User Support
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+ 107 • Setonix GPU Partition Quick Start
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+ 108 • Pawsey Resource Overview
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+ 109 • Pawsey Research Infrastructure Connected listing
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