ACT partners with NATO Innovation Hub for internship programs
Starting January 2021, ACT - the American College of Thessaloniki and NATO’s Allied Command Transformation Innovation Hub based in Norfolk, Virginia (USA) launched a partnership involving internship positions for ACT students at the Innovation Hub.
NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) Innovation Hub is an open collaboration community of people and entities developing innovative ideas and solutions to the challenges NATO faces. The developers’ community includes academia, industry and innovators from the public while, in addition to the developers, the community includes end users and capability designers, all working towards innovative solutions to operational needs.
The first cohort consists of eleven students of the ACT program of Political Science & International Relations assigned to projects of great variety. Two of our students are now interns in the Human Domain/Cognitive Warfare working on the human operational domain and cognitive warfare topics, another two joined the Innovation Hub (IH) communications helping with written communication, three are working on insights about existing or emerging AI technologies, while the rest four joined the language translation project team working with translation technologies.
The internships are expected to last about four to six months depending on the project while interns will gain practical experience in real-life situations and build skills that will be valuable to their future professional life. The number of placements is expected to develop, increase and diversify in other areas of interest through time.
As the Chair of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dr. Maria Kyriakidou, who acts as the liaison for the partnership, noted “the engagement of our students in such internships will equip them with collaborative & interpersonal dexterities, confidence and adaptability both at the site of placement and at future workplaces”.
