King's College London

The HDR UK Health Data Science Black Internship Programme is a national initiative designed to increase representation in health data science and research. Students apply to the programme for paid summer internships hosted by participating organisations, where they undertake an eight-week research placement. The programme is run by HDR UK in partnership with the 10,000 Interns Foundation.

As a host organisation, King’s provides interns with paid placements, identifies research projects and brings together supervisors and mentors to support their development. At King’s, the internship was co-organised by Dr Anastasia Jablonska (Psychology) and Dr Diana Shamsutdinova (Biostatistics & Health Informatics), who worked to identify projects, supervisors and mentors for the interns across the School. Alongside their research placements, interns take part in professional development, training, networking and a national cohort programme.

Research experience at King’s

This year, King’s hosted three HDR UK Black Interns:

• Warith Kolawole, from the University of Nottingham, where he is studying BSc Computer Science with Cyber Physical Systems. Warith was supervised by Ms Eliza Ferguson and Ms Nusaibah Islam (CEDAR group, Psychology) on a project evaluating a culturally tailored, app-based cognitive bias modification intervention.
• Sean Obi, from Imperial College London, where he is studying MEng Molecular Bioengineering. Sean worked with Dr Ewan Carr on developing an AI research assistant to support sample-size calculations for clinical prediction modelling studies, building on the R package pmsims.
• Casey Adomah, who is entering her third year of BSc (Hons) Neuroscience at the University of Leicester. Casey worked with Dr Jonathan Coleman (Statistical Genetics, SGDP) on a project exploring when an unusual questionnaire response is genuinely unusual.

Through their placements, the interns worked alongside established research teams and had the opportunity to apply knowledge from their degrees to real-world research.

Reflecting on the experience

At the end of the eight-week programme, the co-organisers hosted a closing event where the interns presented posters showcasing their projects and reflected on their experiences. The event provided an opportunity for the interns to share what they had learned and celebrate their achievements with their supervisors, mentors and colleagues from across the School.

The interns highlighted the value of seeing research in practice and applying and developing skills from their undergraduate studies with the support of their project teams. The internship also gave them the opportunity to become part of a wider research community and consider what their future might look like beyond their undergraduate degrees, including postgraduate study at MSc and PhD level and potential careers in research and health data science.

The interns were supported by supervisors and a wider network of mentors from across the School including: Professor Juliana Onwumere (Clinical Psychology), Professor Kimberley Goldsmith, Dr Tao Wang and Dr Omar Elsayed (Biostatistics and Health Informatics). Their support provided the interns with additional insight into research careers and opportunities.

Building connections across the School

The programme also created opportunities for collaboration across the School of Mental Health & Psychological Sciences, bringing colleagues together to support the interns and share expertise across different areas of research.

By hosting interns through the HDR UK Black Internship Programme, King’s is helping to create pathways into health data science and research, while strengthening connections between students and the research community.