The primary goal of the Odysseus is to afford exceptional undergraduate students the opportunity to participate and contribute to exciting research projects at leading research facilities and to inspire these students to take the first step on a path to a research career. Specifically, we aim:

1. To afford undergraduate interns the opportunity to undertake research in a distributed yet cooperative research environment;

2. To introduce our research to undergraduates through exciting real-world applications that will actually be deployed, used or incorporated into ongoing research projects;

3. To expose students to novel research problems, cross-cutting research exploration, specialised state of the art equipment and inter-discipliniary research expertise;

4. To provide a foundation of basic research skills to the undergraduate interns which will aid them in transforming their research internship experience into a long term plan for final year research or subsequent research career options;

5. To stimulate enrollment in graduate studies through involvement of talented undergraduate students in scientific investigation under mentorship of researchers and prepare scholars for graduate studies;

6. To raise awareness and understanding of the areas defined as themes in Odysseus;

7. To develop showcase exemplars that will allow us to tell the story of our research to the wider lay community.