Halie Murray-Davis hired for prestigious summer internship in Norway

Kongsberg Maritime announced that Halie Murray-Davis from Lewes was hired for a prestigious summer internship in Norway. From the 253 candidates who applied, Murray-Davis from Lewes received one of nine summer internships in the Zeppaloon project with Kongsberg Maritime in Kongsberg, Norway.

Nine students worked through the summer on an international, multi-disciplinary project to develop Zeppaloon, which focuses on implementing solutions to control an airship. The team is using new technologies such as 3D printing to guarantee success. The objective is that by the end of the summer, the airship should be easy to maneuver and demonstrate some potential future opportunities with airship control systems.

There’s been a big interest in joining this year’s Zeppaloon program.

“We think [Halie Murray-Davis] is an important resource for the project becoming a success,” says Håvard Moe, executive vice president of Kongsberg Maritime. This year the project is composed of an international team that will work through the summer. There are students from the United States, Italy, France and Norway.

The Kongsberg Group hired 179 summer interns from a selection of 2,008 applications. This is a new record in both the number of hired interns as well as applications for the technology corporation.

“We notice increasing interest among students in working with challenges relevant to their university studies. We increased this year to 179 summer interns, and this is a record amount of students for the Kongsberg Group,” said Walter Qvam, CEO in the Kongsberg Group.

The Kongsberg Group offers two different types of summer internships. The students either work on a specific summer project or in a technical department. The summer projects Zeppaloon and LocalHawk are the most popular and get most of the applications. LocalHawk, the summer project from Kongsberg Defence Systems, received approximately 450 applications for the 23 available positions.

“The summer programs LocalHawk and Zeppaloon are examples of the technology the Kongsberg Group works with every day. The interns work on a project from beginning to the end, with relevant technical challenges and with guidance from experienced engineers,” said Qvam.

The summer internships are important in the recruitment work done by the Kongsberg Corporation. It’s also part of the responsibility the Kongsberg Group has toward promoting the importance of technology and motivating students to further excel in their studies. Through such initiatives, the hope is to decrease the amount of students who drop out of studies before finishing.

The summer internships provide an opportunity for the company and the students to get to know each other. This might end in a job offer after finished studies. Their experience at Kongsberg Group helps motivate the students when going back to their studies in following semesters.

“The students also provide us with new knowledge and bring their experience from university, and this provides us an added value as well as challenging our process and way of working,” Qvam said.

“The summer internships are a combination of undergraduate students and those close to finishing their master's degrees. It’s important to have a good balance of both bachelor and master students, both in for the summer internships as well as among our employees.”