Working on CPT to fund my CS PhD

[Yan Yang]

It sucks but I had to face the reality that my advisor decided to break our contract and stop my funding only after one semester. Luckily, I'm currently talking with a company regarding an internship opportunity and they probably want me to start immediately on CPT. So I'm here to ask some questions about this.

First of all, is there any case that a PhD started their first research project together with the company that they do an internship in? I need this piece of information because I'm gonna talk with their president and CEO in the upcoming final rounds of interviews. Is it possible for me to talk about longer-term cooperation with them, instead of an internship that lasts only until the end of the summer?

Second, my department administrative people said without an assistantship, I won't have a tuition waiver and the reduced workload in this way, which means I'll have to pay a larger portion of my salary to the school each semester. Can I ask one of my teachers to provide me an assistantship position for, say, 1 hour per week, and use the rest 19 hours per week to work with the company? If I plan to produce papers while working as an intern, it would be legitimate to say I'm utilizing the work experience in the company to facilitate my research with that teacher.