NSPC Internship Program

The NSPC offers a variety of summer internship opportunities to students with an interest in national security. Applications for the NSPC’s 2026 Summer Internship programs are now closed. Applications for summer 2027 will open in February.  

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Opportunities

Internship opportunities through the NSPC vary slightly year by year. The Center hosts summer internships in Charlottesville for up to 10 undergraduate and graduate students each summer for either 8-week or 10-week sessions. The NSPC has also offered off-site opportunities in partnership with outside organizations, including: 

  • Center for Strategic and International Studies 
  • Center for New American Security  
  • Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments 
  • Impact Greene, Greene County  

 

Why Participate?

Our undergraduate researchers and interns come from across the University to address difficult national security challenges. They develop strong research and presentation skills, while supporting a wide range of government and academic sponsored research. Along the way, our interns gain an understanding of the complexities of national security policymaking; establish positive relationships and build new networks; and receive professional advice and mentorship from NSPC leadership.

 

Eligibility

All undergraduate students, regardless of major, are eligible to apply for our internship program.

 

Washington Harbour's company logoSupport

The National Security Policy Center’s 2026 Summer Internship was made possible through the support of Washington Harbour.

Interested in lending your support as a NSPC partner? Visit our support page to learn more about different ways to contribute to NSPC research, internships, programming, and more.

 

 

NSPC 2025 Summer Internship

Over the course of two months, the National Security Policy Center (NSPC) 2025 summer intern cohort conducted research on the national security implications of emerging technologies and strategic competition with China for the newly established National Security Data and Policy Institute (NSDPI) at UVA. Founded in August 2024, the NSDPI is a collaboration between the University and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that leverages UVA’s robust expertise in public policy, data science, research computing, and artificial intelligence to help address the nation’s most pressing national security challenges. The work these students produced will serve as an informative foundation for future NSDPI research efforts.

During the first half of this summer program, the cohort worked collaboratively to explore the evolution of power generation, transmission, and energy storage in the U.S. and China over the past fifty years. They produced backgrounder memos, comprehensive literature reviews, and annotated bibliographies before briefing NSDPI staff directly on their findings.

In the second half of the summer, each intern worked on an individual policy white paper exploring a topic of interest to the NSDPI. Their topics were extraordinarily diverse, including the implications of helium-3 mining on the moon, maritime strategy in the South China Sea, and the role of AI in disinformation and cognitive warfare. On July 18th, these student researchers each presented their work to a packed audience of academic, industry, and government national security professionals. Their full research is available to view and download on the NSPC’s Research Page.

A key component of the NSPC summer internship experience is career readiness. In this vein, interns had the opportunity to listen to and engage directly with a wide range of intelligence professionals, academics, and subject-matter experts. Notably, interns learned from a panel of former career CIA officers who shared insights into careers at the Agency and the process of obtaining a security clearance; discussions with leading China experts from the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; a conversation with a former U.S. diplomat about his career in the Foreign Service; and a talk by a former Under Secretary of the Air Force. Through these opportunities, students were able to ask questions, discuss their summer research projects, and gain valuable career insights from experienced professionals.