Research internships for all EIGER Fellows are a vital part of the program. Fellows will be matched with appropriate affiliated laboratories and will spend between three and six months each at up to two institutions at some point during their fellowship. Where possible, the internships will be based in international locations emphasizing our commitment to developing a global research perspective. Together with the EIGER Fellows and their research advisors, the EIGER core faculty will help to design appropriate internships.  EIGER will implement, whenever possible, a novel approach called “paired internships”. Two students with related research, but coming from different disciplines, will be paired. They will jointly undertake two internships: one in a lab closely related to the work of one of the students, and a second in a lab closely related to the work of the other student. In this way, each student will have an opportunity to introduce their paired colleague to the culture and subtleties of research in their own field, but will also have an extended period of time immersed in a different field. To give a specific example, for Fellows conducting research on microbial attachment to mineral surfaces, we envision pairing one student in biosciences with one student in geosciences. Both Fellows would then spend 3 to 6 months in a biological sciences laboratory studying biological aspects of microbial attachment to mineral surfaces. Following this experience, they would both spend 3 to 6 months in a geological sciences laboratory studying mineralogical aspects of microbial attachment to mineral surfaces. In each case, one Fellow will act as a mentor to the other, but they will both obtain significant insights into each other’s disciplinary field of study. Consideration will be given to psychological compatibility of team members. The paired internships should result in scientists and engineers who are substantially “cross-trained,” something that should influence their entire careers in interdisciplinary interfacial science. Behavioral Science EIGER Fellows will also participate. After a pair of Natural Science EIGER Fellows begin their internship, the Behavioral Science Fellows will make an initial visit of several weeks, and then make a follow-up visit of similar length towards the end of the internship. The institutions listed below have all agreed to host EIGER Fellows in both physical and behavioral sciences. Other institutions may also be selected depending on the needs and interests of each student.  Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Tech., Gaithersburg, MD, USA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia Department of Geology, Peking University, Beijing, China Department of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Richland, WA, USA Institute for Biological Structure and Microbiology, CNRS, Marseille, France Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group, University of Cambridge, England Institute for Mineralogy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany Limnological Research Center, Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG), Kastanienbaum, Switzerland NanoGeoScience Center, Geological Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science, Univ. of Manchester, England All internship plans must be approved by the Executive Committee. Given the complex nature of conducting interdisciplinary research and travel away from Virginia Tech during the course of a dissertation program, the Executive Committee will be flexible in considering various internship models and plans