Are you all about science and technology? Would you like to develop your skills and use them to tackle the greatest challenges of our time? VTT might be just the place for you – apply now for VTT Summer of Changemakers 2026 traineeships! 

VTT is one of the leading applied research organisations in Europe. What unites us are curiosity, a passion for learning, and a purpose: to solve the biggest challenges of our time and turn them into sustainable growth and well-being. Our cross-disciplinary community of nearly 2400 brilliant minds from 60 different nationalities is focused on creating impact through science-based innovation. Now, we are looking for passionate changemakers – you – to join us as summer trainees.

Our last summer's trainees rated their summer job experience at VTT 4.8/5 in our summer job survey. Below are some excerpts from their feedback when asked how they would describe VTT as a workplace:

"I was impressed by how much responsibility and freedom I was given. I was trusted to work independently, but support was always available when needed."

"VTT is a professional, inspiring, and forward-looking workplace where practical impact is evident. The work community is skilled and open to new ideas."

"I found VTT versatile, innovative, and inspiring."

Do you want to be our next Research Trainee in our ProperTune AI team? Join us - and let’s make science work for hope next summer!

As a research trainee, your key goals are to take part in the development of the Material Acceleration Platform for novel battery chemistries, emphasising agentic AI system for material discovery of battery materials systems. The work will address, in part, deep learning methods for electrode to electrolyte interphase design, primarily graph neural networks. In addition, you will assist in the development of computational models for battery material interfaces and various interphase structures.  

Our team, ProperTune AI works on Application of AI in materials science. We utilise and develop machine learning methods and tools to solve materials research problems and challenges. One of our focus topics is agentic AI to accelerate the discovery of advanced materials that is an exciting new application area with a great promise to turn many materials sustainable. 

What would your responsibilities include?

Depending on your background, possible tasks could be: 

• Explore different agentic and multiagent frameworks for mining scientific literature. 
• Develop the agentic system for interacting with material design and discovery models  
• Create an interface (chat-like) for retrieving datasets from selected topics.  
• Establish a reliable workflow to generate consolidated datasets. 
• Assisted in the development of new methods to train machine learned interatomic potentials for predictive synthesis of battery cathode materials. 
• Participated in compilation and optimisation of the performance of computational chemistry software. 
• Calculated the electronic structure of materials using density functional theory and tight binding methods. 
• Actively participated in analysis of the results 

We're looking for someone who:

• has background in materials science, chemistry, physics, computer science, or a related discipline (MSc student) 
• is familiar with computational materials science methods, including density functional theory (DFT) and the application of AI in materials science 
• expose to literature mining, information retrieval, or agent-based / multi-agent frameworks is an advantage. 
• is familiar with Unix-like operating systems 
• has basic experience with scientific programming and data processing (e.g., Python, scripting, data pipelines). 
• feels comfortable collaborating within interdisciplinary groups   

As a person, we hope that you are a curious mind, who is eager to develop and take on new challenges. We appreciate ambition and willingness to learn over having all the answers or skills ready when you start. You are also a team player with strong collaboration skills who wants to drive positive impact in the world.

What would we offer you?

• Impactful work for the future. As a leading applied research organisation, we are on a mission to bring exponential hope to the world by joining together people, businesses, science and technology. We tackle the biggest challenges of our time – from climate change and resource sufficiency to industrial renewal and smart healthcare – and turn them into sustainable growth. Read more about our strategy – the path of exponential hope.
• Career opportunities, top-level mentors. At VTT, your skills are appreciated and supported with the opportunity to learn from the top experts in their field. You’ll get to discover our community of nearly 2400 experts representing 60 nationalities working across cutting-edge fields of science and technology.
• Meaningful projects, real responsibility. With us, you get to take on meaningful projects and create innovative scientific and technical solutions. We treat all employees as equals and give you real responsibility from the start. VTT is a caring employer that supports your growth and work–life balance and offers a range of well-being services.

What is like to work with us solving the biggest challenges of our time? Check from the video what kind of experiences Aymara, Daniil, Eric and Isabella had from their summer traineeships and what kind of change did they drive.

Apply now and join our community of brilliant minds!

Come, curious minds and clever changemakers! Prepare your CV and cover letter, and send in your application with your transcript of records via our recruitment system as soon as possible but at the latest by 1 February 2026. Let’s change the world for the better next summer.

All VTT Summer of Changemakers traineeships are paid, and the salary is determined based on study credits: for Master's students the monthly salary is between 2650€ and 2850€, and for Bachelor's students the monthly salary is between 2150€ and 2450€. The typical duration of traineeships is between 3 and 6 months, with start dates usually falling between March and June, however the length and the exact starting date can be discussed with the hiring team. 

Please read more of VTT Summer of Changemakers from here: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/summer-changemakers

Interested and want to hear more?

For further information, please contact Research Team Leader, Napat Vajragupta, Email: Napat.Vajragupta@vtt.fi, Tel. +358504626958 on 14 January at 11:00-12:00 or on 28 January at 11:00-12:00. 

We will process applications as they come in, and fill in the position as soon as we find the right candidate. We will inform all applicants about the continuation of the process during February 2026. Most of the interview will be held in February-March, however they can be started already during the application period. 

We look forward to hearing from you!