RFF Summer Research Internship Program

Summer 2025 Research Internships

Applications for RFF's Summer 2025 Research Internships are now open! See the project descriptions below for links to apply or check out all current openings here.

Do you want to begin a career in academic or policy research? Are you interested in contributing to impactful, balanced research that is aimed at improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions? A summer research internship with Resources for the Future (RFF) might be right for you.

The RFF summer internship program provides an opportunity for students to prepare for careers that engage in rigorous, policy-relevant research. Interns are essential members of RFF’s Research and Policy Engagement team; they are responsible for providing technical support that, under the direction of RFF Fellows, allows for the production of compelling and impactful research that aligns with RFF’s mission of improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement.

Internships will run from June 9–August 15, 2025. Start or end dates can be changed with an approved exception. All internships will be conducted in RFF’s offices in Washington, DC.

Summer 2025 internship projects include:

• Sea Level Rise, Tidal Flooding, and Business Location Decisions. Working with Margaret Walls (Senior Fellow) and Penny Liao (Fellow), the intern will support RFF’s Climate Risks and Resilience (CRR) Program in understanding how increasing tidal flooding due to sea level rise in the last three decades affects the location decisions made by business establishments and the resulting implications for coastal communities. The intern will process data on tidal gauge readings, business establishments, and census demographics and merge various datasets for purposes of estimating econometric models. The intern will be working toward a draft manuscript for eventual publication in an academic journal.
• Tax Policy Analysis for Critical Minerals. Working with Daniel Raimi (Fellow), the intern will analyze tax policies for minerals production across several states and how these policies may help fund public services or bring other benefits to the community. The intern will also identify possible data sources on mines to explore how critical mineral mining has benefited or created challenges for host communities. The intern will then create an issue brief or other short written product discussing the tax policies and their implications for the future.
• Using Medium to Heavy-Duty Vehicle Model to Understand Truck Utilization. Working with Nafisa Lohawala (Fellow) and Joshua Linn (Senior Fellow), the intern will support RFF’s Transportation Program in cleaning and analyzing trucking survey data to help estimate the effects of various truck attributes (such as age or weight category) on truck utilization. The intern’s work will contribute to a component of RFF’s Framework for Large-Scale Economic Evaluation of Trucking (FLEET) model. The modeling for this project will help stakeholders improve estimates of future truck utilization and better understand the welfare effects of trucking regulations and policies such as greenhouse gas emissions standards. The intern will report on their findings via a memo or other short written product.
• Transitioning Oil and Gas Wells to Lithium Extraction. Working with Beia Spiller (Fellow), the intern will support RFF’s Transportation Program in researching and producing written material on the economic impacts of oil- and gas-reliant communities in Texarkana transitioning from oil and gas extraction activities to direct lithium extraction, including tax/royalty benefits and employment opportunities. The intern will contribute to the ongoing Critical Minerals sub-program at RFF in developing internal documentation from the conducted research with the possibility of producing smaller external products such as blog posts.
• Haiku Electricity Model Transition. Working with Dallas Burtraw (Senior Fellow) and our Electric Power Program, the intern will play a key role in beginning the transition of the model’s primary data sources to an open-source system, which involves expanding the API data streams we have used previously to all inputs from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook. The intern will also have the opportunity to automate other data from open sources to contribute to the model. This project will include data documentation, plant data input processing, and data integration. The internship will culminate in a new plant dataset for our Haiku electricity model that will be used in RFF’s future work. The intern may also have the opportunity to use the model in their own research once the open-source process is complete.
• Assessing the Impacts of ICE Bans. Working with Jenya Kahn-Lang (Fellow), the intern will conduct an exploratory analysis and a policy review of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle bans and their impact. The intern will compile and analyze policies that would affect manufacturer decisions, including electric vehicle (EV) market entry, vehicle pricing in different states, and factors related to fuel economy. The intern will look at sources of variation in policies as a supplemental analysis to support RFF’s current work. The intern will lead the writing of an internal document detailing these policies to support related work in the future.
• Extreme Weather Impacts on Electricity Markets. Working with Jenya Kahn-Lang (Fellow), the intern will conduct an exploratory analysis on the impacts of extreme weather events, such as Winter Storm Uri, on electricity market prices and offerings. The intern will help RFF investigate impacts on firm behavior, analyze resulting inefficiencies, and explore market design solutions. The intern will conduct econometric analysis to identify the effects on firms’ decisions and explore potential explanations for these changes. The intern will lead the writing of an internal document summarizing their findings to support related work in the future.

FAQs

Education level: By and large, RFF summer research internships are geared toward graduate students (either Masters or PhD), although some openings are available to advanced undergraduates. In the past, some graduate-level interns have also chosen to continue collaborating with RFF on academic journal articles beyond their paid internships. Please see individual job descriptions (linked above) for specific education requirements of the various roles.

Compensation: All RFF internships are paid. We offer a sliding pay scale for interns based on the level of completion in their degree programs, ranging from $17.50 per hour to $26 per hour.