 The U.S. Army Research Laboratory is looking for summer interns on the West Coast. I'm Cindy Bedell and I'm the regional lead at the Army Research Lab West in Playa Vista, California. The 2017 Institute for Creative Technology Summer Research Program offers a lot of benefits. A one year in West LA, which is a great place to spend the summer. But there are tremendous resources between USC, UCLA, ARL West and the Institute for Creative Technologies to try different experimental techniques, to work with people in other disciplines and to do so in a very dynamic intellectual environment. So who can apply? So we want to attract students from the universities in California, but it is open to any student throughout the country. We had students from the East Coast. We had students from Texas. We had students from California. So last summer, even though the program was very short notice, we had students from all over the country. We had three third grade Marshall students last summer, as well as our other interns that were hired through the ICT. It's open to anyone who qualifies our screening. What's ARL West? So ARL West is focused on human information interaction. That is a target area that crosses human sciences, information sciences, computational sciences, and analysis and assessment. As well as maneuver sciences, because this is how we can communicate with autonomous agents, whether they're embodied like a robot or disembodied like a smart algorithm within a network. So the students do need to be in one of the fundamental research areas we're looking at. So that's cognitive science, computational science, computational linguistics, robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or information sciences. So it's fairly broad area that will qualify for one of the programs that we're working in. But they have to be ready to work both independently on their piece of the project and collaboratively with other students and their mentors. And they have to be willing to work on an interdisciplinary problem, because these are problems at the cross sections of multiple disciplines. Sounds good. What do I have to do? The Institute for Creative Technology will hire our summer interns for us. So you have to go to their website and go to the intern link to find the projects. And you'll need a resume and you'll need to be able to say why you are qualified under each of the criterion that's advertised under each position. If you're interested in more than one position, you should apply for each of the positions so you answer the questions under each of the position descriptions. There can be more than one person hired under each position, so don't hesitate to apply to as many as you feel qualified for. The short timeline, the applications have to be in by Sunday, February 5th. And the packets will be evaluated throughout the rest of February and March and offers will be made in late March or during April. February 5th is the deadline for applying. So last year was a pioneering adventure, because I officially became the regional lead on 29 May and our first interns arrived on 2 June. We had only four permanent party researchers on 2 June, but we received 17 interns. What we did instead of having on-site researchers, we had mentors come from ARL East and actually also from White Sands Missile Range to ARL West to meet the students to organize the collective research and mentor them for a couple of weeks and then go back to their normal duty stations and then keep up in touch with the students via Skype or FaceTime. The 2017 ICT Summer Research Program application deadline is February 5th. Apply now!