15 Summer Engineering Programs for High School Students in Houston, Texas
Engineering is one of the most practical fields to explore in high school, and summer programs are a great way to do this early on. In Houston, home to NASA, top research hospitals, and major energy companies, you will find programs that combine classroom learning with engineering projects and lab experiences.
These programs help you try out different branches of engineering, such as aerospace, mechanical, electrical, and biomedical, while building skills in design, coding, robotics, and problem solving. Many include time in university labs, sessions with professional engineers, and team-based challenges that simulate real engineering work.
To get you started, here are 15 summer engineering programs for high school students in Houston, Texas!
15 Summer Engineering Programs for High School Students in Houston, Texas
1. Rice University’s ELITE Tech Camps
Location: Rice University
Cost: $3,795 for residents; $1,695 for commuters
Dates: One week; multiple sessions
Application deadline: Based on seats
Eligibility: All high school students
At Rice ELITE Tech Camps, you spend your mornings in fast-paced sessions led by faculty from the George R. Brown School of Engineering. These focus on specific topics like deep learning basics, AI systems, machine learning models, data analytics, and Internet-of-Things devices. The sessions are short but packed with technical depth, giving you a clear picture of how these fields work in real-world settings.
Afternoons are spent in simulation labs where you go through each step of the engineering design cycle. You define a problem, build a model, prototype your solution, test it, and refine based on results. Faculty and researchers guide you throughout the process, helping you translate theory into working models.
2. Veritas AI
Location: Virtual
Cost: AI Scholars: $2,290 | AI Fellowship: $5,400 | Both programs: $6,900; need-based financial aid is available for AI Scholars
Dates: Offered year-round in multiple 12–15 week cohorts, including summer sessions
Application deadline: Multiple deadlines in May and June for summer cohorts
Eligibility: High school students. To be eligible for the AI Fellowship program, you need to have been an AI Scholar participant or have prior experience with Python/AI.
Veritas AI, created and led by Harvard graduate students, offers two routes for high-schoolers eager to explore artificial intelligence. AI Scholars is a 10-session boot camp that moves quickly from Python fundamentals to hands-on machine-learning labs. Each cohort finishes by tackling a real-world data problem and presenting the results in a compact showcase.
If you already know how to code, the AI Fellowship with Publication & Showcase gives you a chance to work one-on-one with a mentor from a top research university. You design and build an AI project and spend weeks testing, improving, and analyzing your results.
3. NASA Space Center Houston’s Stars and STEM Workshops
Location: Space Center Houston, NASA Parkway, Houston, TX
Cost: $69.95 per student, $59.95 per adult
Dates: June. Here is the full schedule
Application deadline: Open enrollment
Eligibility: Students between 15 and 18 years old are eligible for the high school workshops
Stars & STEM is an overnight program where you take part in engineering and coding challenges inspired by real NASA work. At the On-Target Engineering Challenge, teams sketch, iterate, and test a lunar lander that must nail a simulated touchdown. The Estes Model Rocket Build converts Newton’s motion laws into hardware as you assemble and predict the arc of a flight-ready rocket.
In the TPS Design Challenge, you work on a thermal-protection shield that keeps a “capsule” safe from searing heat, while the Lunar Coding Challenge has you upload commands to guide an autonomous rover across cratered terrain. The night concludes with a guided tram through NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
4. Lumiere Research Scholar Program - STEM Track
Location: Virtual
Cost: Starts at $2,990; financial assistance is available
Dates: Offered in multiple cohorts year-round, including summer sessions that run from June to August
Application deadline: Varies by cohort; the upcoming summer session’s deadline is June 23
Eligibility: High school students with strong academic performance; most accepted students have an unweighted GPA of 3.3 or higher
The Lumiere Research Scholar Program is a selective, remote research program that matches high school students with PhD mentors from top universities. You work one-on-one to design and complete a research project over 12 weeks. You start with topic exploration, move into guided reading and proposal writing, and then spend the rest of the program conducting research and writing your final paper.
You can choose from over 25 subject areas, including engineering, economics, psychology, neuroscience, international relations, computer science, and more. Lumiere was founded by Harvard and Oxford researchers and is known for its structured mentorship model and academic focus. Past mentors have included PhD candidates from schools like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Yale.
5. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center DACCPM Summer Research Program
Location: MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Cost: Free
Dates: June 2 - Aug 8
Application deadline: Jan 20
Eligibility: Current high-school seniors aged 18 or older—provided they remain in good academic standing or are nearing graduation—may apply
The DACCPM Summer Research Program is a ten-week research experience where you move from learning theory in the classroom to doing real lab and clinical work. You train in core research skills like bench techniques, clinical protocols, data collection, and literature reviews. You are matched with a faculty mentor and work on a focused research project that ends with a poster presentation at a summer symposium. Your abstract is also published in the program’s annual CATALYST compendium.
6. University of Houston Mohan Lab Summer Internship
Location: University of Houston, Houston, TX
Cost: Free
Dates: June 2 - July 25
Application deadline: March 28
Eligibility: Students who have finished 11th grade and are entering their senior year are eligible to apply
The MohanLab internship gives rising seniors direct experience in biomedical and bioengineering research. You start with a short training period that covers core lab protocols, then spend eight weeks working at the bench alongside scientists and graduate researchers. You design and run your experiments with close guidance. After the main lab work, you can choose to stay on for an optional extension focused on analyzing your data and helping draft a research manuscript. The program ends with a presentation of your findings, and some students are credited as co-authors on published papers.
7. Rice STEM Academy
Location: Rice University, Houston, TX
Cost: Fully funded
Dates: July 7 – 11
Application deadline: Typically June
Eligibility: Students entering 10th or 11th grade may apply
Rice STEM Academy is a free, week-long program for high school girls focused on using engineering to solve sustainability challenges. You work in Rice University’s research labs with support from faculty and graduate mentors, turning science concepts into practical tools. Each day brings a new challenge. You build and drop-test a planetary lander, use Micro Bits to map out circuits, and program TI Nspire Rovers to model motion.
8. Texas High School Aerospace Scholars
Location: Houston, TX
Cost: Fully funded
Dates: Year-long program
Application deadline: Typically October
Eligibility: Texas-based high-school juniors are eligible to apply
Texas High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) guides Texas juniors through a year-long exploration of NASA’s latest science and flight initiatives. The experience opens each fall with a five-month, facilitator-led online course that weaves together planetary exploration, Earth science, emerging technologies, and aeronautics.
Throughout the curriculum, you complete interactive modules, solve design briefs, and exchange ideas with NASA professionals. Top performers advance to Moonshot, a five-day virtual capstone where teams pair with agency scientists and engineers to prototype systems, tackle live engineering problems, and craft mission plans aimed at the Moon and eventually Mars.
9. Houston Methodist’s Summer Internship Program for High Schoolers
Location: Houston Methodist Hospital campus in the Texas Medical Center, Houston, TX
Cost: Free; scholarships available
Dates: June 9 – August 1
Application deadline: January 31
Eligibility: Applicants must be rising juniors or seniors and at least 16 years old on the program’s first day
Houston Methodist’s High-School Translational Research Internship places you in an active research lab at Houston Methodist, where you work alongside scientists on real medical studies. You’re matched with a mentor whose project aligns with your interests, and you take on specific tasks like running assays, recording results, and fine-tuning lab protocols.
As your work progresses, you prepare a scientific poster based on your findings and present it at a final symposium. Alongside the lab work, you attend workshops on scientific writing, college planning, and pre-med pathways, giving you both hands-on skills and a clearer sense of how to move forward in medicine.
10. Rice University Aerospace & Aviation Academy
Location: Houston, TX
Cost: $6,745
Dates: June 22 - July 3 | July 5 - July 16
Application deadline: Not specified
Eligibility: All high school students
The Aerospace Academy is a summer program for high school students interested in aerospace and aviation. While staying on the Rice University campus, you attend daily sessions led by Rice faculty and meet professionals from NASA and other space-related organizations. One of the highlights is a talk by former NASA astronaut Dr. Leroy Chiao, who shares his experience in space and the tech industry.
You also visit the Lone Star Flight Museum, where you go through ground school, practice flight planning, and use a simulator to apply what you learn. Site visits and hands-on labs help you understand what a career in aerospace looks like and give you early exposure to the skills and knowledge used in the field.
11. Tapia STEM Camps
Location: Rice University campus, Houston, Texas
Cost: $250
Dates: July 7 – 12
Application deadline: Not specified
Eligibility: Students entering grades 7–12
Tapia STEM Camps are six-day, five-night residential programs for students in grades 7 to 12, hosted on the Rice University campus. Mornings are hands-on: younger students might design carbon-capture models, while high schoolers work on mock research briefs and college essay writing.
Afternoons focus on labs, team projects, and guest talks from industry professionals. You build skills in coding, design, and data analysis. Evenings are more social, with STEM games and challenges. Midweek, you visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Space Center Houston to connect your work to real-world missions.
12. MIT - Beaver Works Summer Institute
Location: Virtual
Cost: For any family that has a family income $150,000 or greater, the fee for the program is $2,350. The program is free for qualifying families.
Dates: July 7 – August 3
Application Deadline: March 31
Eligibility: High school juniors are eligible to apply
The Beaver Works Summer Institute at MIT is a four-week residential program where you work in teams to design, build, and program autonomous robots. Each day starts with short lectures led by MIT faculty and engineers from Lincoln Laboratory, covering topics like sensor physics, AI algorithms, and systems integration.
In the afternoons, you apply what you learned by building working prototypes. You can join advanced tracks like Remote Sensing for Disaster Response or Unmanned Air System Radar, where you match hardware to real-world challenges. By the end, you will have tested robots in the field, coded autonomous systems, and built a full project portfolio that shows your readiness for college-level engineering.
13. NASA Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) Internships
Location: Virtual and in-person
Cost: Free
Dates: Dates vary depending on the internship
Application Deadline: April
Eligibility: High school students who are at least 16 years old, have a 3.0 cumulative GPA on a 4.0 scale, and are U.S. citizens are eligible to apply
The NASA OSTEM Internship places high school and college students on real mission teams at NASA centers across the country. You work alongside engineers and scientists on active projects, whether that means testing wind-tunnel equipment, writing code for rover systems, or analyzing satellite data.
Internships are offered year-round and can be full-time or part-time, in person or remote. Each project supports real NASA goals, so your work contributes to missions in progress. You gain hands-on experience with professional tools while learning directly from the people building NASA’s next breakthroughs.
14. Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute (Google CSSI)
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free
Dates: Typically June – August
Application Deadline: February 28 (tentative)
Eligibility: Open to high school seniors planning to enroll in a four-year college in the U.S. or Canada, with a strong passion for tech and computer science
CSSI is a three-week program where you build real applications while learning directly from Google engineers. Each day includes coding sessions and team projects that teach you how to design, test, and debug software. Engineers mentor you on how to write clean code, use design patterns, and work in fast-paced teams.
The program also gives you a look inside Google’s work culture. You attend sessions on how products are developed, explore tech career paths, and learn what makes large engineering teams run smoothly. By the end, you will have built working projects, improved your programming skills, and connected with mentors in the industry.
15. UC Berkeley Coding Academy’s Data Science to AI
Location: Virtual
Cost: Starting at $2,499 (financial aid available)
Dates: Varies by cohort
Application Deadline: Based on remaining seats
Eligibility: Open to students aged 12-18
UC Berkeley’s Summer Data Science & AI Course introduces students ages 12 to 18 to core ideas in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Whether you're new to coding or already comfortable with Python, instructors adjust the pace to match your experience. You work with real datasets to see how algorithms find patterns, make predictions, and handle large-scale problems.
In guided labs, you write and debug Python code, train machine learning models, and study how companies use data in the real world. You work in small teams to review each other’s code, discuss design choices, and build capstone projects that bring your ideas together.
Image source - MIT