Internship – Processing & Analysis

Mission to Metrics

In our mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, we rely on a thorough understanding of the ocean plastic pollution problem. The research team at The Ocean Cleanup aims to refine our understanding of the sources, transport, and fate of ocean and ocean-bound plastics.

Recently, the research team has developed and proven the Autonomous Debris Imaging System (ADIS), an approach for mapping marine plastic litter that relies on smart cameras to detect plastics worldwide from shipping lanes. We are starting to scale up our mapping effort by deploying these autonomous cameras on a growing number of ships.

We will be hosting an internship to work with the latest ADIS data and perform several case studies. The internship will focus on transforming our processed data into meaningful insights, testing and improving existing workflows.

With ADIS we are building a marine plastic monitoring network. The findings from your internship will contribute to a more accurate world map of floating ocean plastic, aiding our targeted cleanup

Robin de Vries, ADIS Lead

Responsibilities

You are responsible for the postprocessing and interpretation of ADIS data, after it has been uploaded and preprocessed in our database. Your assignment will likely focus on a set of selected cameras or a geographic region. Other responsibilities include:

• Data quality control and assessment of error margins
• Collaborating with the ADIS team and the data engineering team to understand and improve the data pipeline
• Conducting data analysis, interpretation, presentation and documenting your work in a report

Professional qualifications

• Bachelor's degree, pursuing post-graduate science education
• A background in GIS, Geomatics, or similar field
• A curriculum which includes GIS (i.e. ArcMap and/or QGis), (geo)statistics, python, and PostgreSQL

Preferred skills

• Experience with the concepts of signal processing, estimation theory, and object detection
• Experience with plastic pollution research
• Experience with (ecological) distance surveys
• Experience with data visualization and storytelling
• Experience in science communication to present findings
• Skills in interdisciplinary and international communication for planning and correspondence with research collaborators worldwide
• Fluent in spoken and written English

Personal qualifications

• Be able to quickly get to the essence of a technical challenge, and investigate the most relevant/important aspects to get to a solution direction
• Able to perform well in a fast-paced and challenging environment
• Ability to work independently
• Strong organizational skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Intrinsic motivation to work towards our ambitious and meaningful goal

Additional details

• Starting date: May 2026
• Duration: 6 months full-time
• Work permit needed: European Union
• Candidate needs to be enrolled at a University (MSc program) during the duration of the internship