Katellen InstituteHong KongHKU iDendron

← All openings · Paid research internship · two tracks

Role oneEarth &
environment
Two tracks

Earth & Environment Research

We have researched a large collection of real field sites across Asia, with live environmental data behind them. Two very different people could move this forward. Apply to whichever track is yours — say which one in your application.

What we need

All majors are welcome — passion is what matters. Earth Sciences, Ecology, Environmental Science, Geography, Computer Science and Engineering are natural fits — but they are not requirements. These are:

  • Everyone — a current HKU student who cares that what a child sees is true.
  • Track A — native or near-native English, and real experience explaining things to children: teaching, tutoring, a summer camp, a younger sibling you were good with. Plus the instinct to ask “who measured that, and when?” No coding needed.
  • Track B — hands-on experience with 3D or spatial data, and enough code to build a prototype yourself.

Track A — Field science & evidence · our primary need

Verify.

Every site on our map has to earn its place. You will check sites independently against published sources, promote the ones that hold — and, just as importantly, refuse the ones that do not.

Open a new ecosystem.

Our work so far lives mostly in farmland and urban growing. There are whole kinds of living system we have not opened yet. You would research one of them properly, for the first time.

Find what settles a question.

This is the heart of the role. On a farm, a child's prediction is settled by real, public, regularly published measurements anyone can go and check. In a system we have not opened yet, we do not know what settles anything. Finding the data that can honestly answer a child's claim — and proving it is trustworthy — is your work.

Write for a ten-year-old.

Our guide talks to children aged 8–14. The science must be exactly right, and the words must be ones a child already owns.

Your first project: one batch of field sites — verify each against published sources, and promote or refuse it.

Track B — Spatial computing · for the 3D builder

Give a place its third dimension.

Our field sites currently exist as points on a map. They could exist as space — terrain, structure, canopy, the real shape of a plot a child could move through. You would work on 3D capture and reconstruction, point clouds, terrain and satellite data, and what today's world models can honestly give a classroom.

Prove what is real.

The same rule applies here as everywhere else in our work: a reconstruction that invents detail it did not measure is worse than no reconstruction. You would establish what we can show a child and stand behind.

Over a few projects there is time to build something real on this track, which is why it is open at all. It suits someone comfortable with 3D data and willing to write code.


What you get

What you get

Work that ships.

What you verify goes into the map; what you measure changes the product. Children will use what you build.

Work you can show.

Every project ends with something real for your portfolio — and when your work appears in something we publish, you are credited.

A seat inside a real startup.

You will see how an early-stage deeptech company is actually built — the funding, the accelerators, the decisions, the parts nobody puts in a deck — by being part of building it.

A weekly working hour with the founders.

One standing hour every week with the founder and a co-founder who read Natural Sciences at Cambridge and spent forty years making physical things at scale — spent pushing your work forward.

Terms
Eligibility
Current HKU students
Format
Part-time · hybrid — onsite at HKU iDendron and work-from-home
Structure
One project at a time · each two to six months, sized to you and the work · each ends with something shipped
Batch 1
Projects between Oct 2026 and Mar 2027 — apply now
Batch 2
Feb – Jul 2027 — announced late January
First project
The trial — at its end, you and we choose the next one
Hours
Negotiable — around 8–10 per week, built around your timetable
Breaks
Planned up front — exams and holidays are expected, January is a natural pause
Rate
HK$80 per hour
Seats
Batch 1: one per role
You leave with
A shipped portfolio piece · a reference letter from the founder · credit when your work is published

You commit to a project, not to a year. Each project ends with something shipped, and at each end you and we choose the next one. Tell us your exam timetable and we will build the schedule together.


How to apply

Three steps.

  1. Read the manifesto — five minutes at katellen.org/manifesto. Everything we build follows from it — and no cover letter is needed, ever.
  2. Show us who you are — one email.

    Required — plain and short, written or spoken (a two-minute video or voice note counts exactly the same): ① Which track — A or B — and why it fits you. ② Your relevant experience, briefly: for Track A, explaining things to children and working with sources; for Track B, 3D or spatial work you have done. ③ One claim about nature you have seen online and doubted — and how you would check whether it is true.

    Optional — and the part we most enjoy: what do you want to do, in this internship and after it? What are you passionate about, and what is the dream? How can Katellen help you get there? Tell it in whatever form tells it best — write a page or two, record a short video or a voice note, or show us something you have made. Effort, in any form, is what passion looks like.

    A CV is optional. Links to real work — a portfolio, GitHub, photos of things you built — are always welcome.
  3. Send it to join@katellen.org with the subject line “Earth & Environment” — or just click that link and the subject fills itself in.

What happens next: we reply to every application, and we review them as they arrive — early applications get early answers. The process is short: your email, one conversation with the founder at HKU iDendron — where you see both prototypes, live — and a clear answer. Batch 1 interviews run through September; first projects start October 2026.