Across four schools, Brandeis grad students develop through internships

October 13, 2026

Abigail Arnold | Office of Graduate Affairs

Brandeis students are known for their learning in and out of the classroom - and this year, graduate students put their Brandeis experience into practice while also building new skills through internships. We talked to students across all four schools about their experiences, what they learned from them, and what advice they would share with other students.

Anna Brezgis, MS in Computational Linguistics, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Anna Brezgis, a second-year master's student, spent the summer as a research assistant in the AI technology and systems group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "I was fully in charge of my own project, which focused on interpretability and visualization of Large Language Model (LLM) internals for AI security," she said. She defined her own question and methodologies, while meeting weekly with her supervisor and in teams with other employees to refine her work and get feedback. "I liked the intellectual freedom to pursue my own idea," Brezgis said. "Along with that, I liked that there were high expectations but also high support from everyone around; I got to enjoy the freedom along with the knowledge that lots of people wanted me to succeed."

Brezgis found her internship through one of the Computational Linguistics MS program's industry receptions. The program sent an email before the reception listing the attendees, including Brezgis's future supervisor, whose work caught her eye. "I read her papers and then approached her at the reception," she said. "We had a lot in common." In addition to the program's connections, the program's teachings were also very important to Brezgis as an intern, allowing her to both build on her current knowledge and bring back new skills. "I used everything I learned in the program every day," she said. "I also had to learn a lot but have found that a lot of the knowledge I picked up there is now contributing here. I learned a lot about systems, because I had to share central computing and data management resources, and gained a much deeper understanding of language modeling and the math behind it. I also built up my people skills through my interactions with a lot of working professionals."

Brezgis enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about a new type of workplace as well. "I deepened my love for doing research and learned a lot about the research process, but I also learned a lot about everything in national labs and related to national security," she said. "They are very cool places that I recommend as internship opportunities for people in computer science and machine learning. In our field, a lot of the same principles apply to different tasks and jobs, so you can use them as your foundation and apply them to almost anything." While her official internship lasted from May to August, she is still working on her project at the labs about ten hours a week as student technical staff. She and her supervisor are hoping to publish a paper based on her work.

Brezgis stressed the importance of building authentic relationships with others based on one's own interests. "Relationships and connections are everything. Just knowing yourself and your kind of weird passions and specific interests is the deepest strength you can possibly bring to your career - they individuate you and make you super valuable to the specific places that need those skills," she said. "I am interested in geometric and topological approaches to representation analysis or language models - a lot of people use these but in a more implicit way. When I first talked to my supervisor, since I'd read her papers, I was able to ask her about how she got interested in this niche area. Ultimately, we were able to find the perfect slot for me in my niches."

Sam Pearl, MPP, ACLU of Massachusetts

As an intern with the ACLU of Massachusetts this summer, second-year Master's of Public Policy student Sam Pearl worked on an exciting range of projects and learned firsthand about the workings of local government. Her primary project was related to the PROTECT Act, aimed at protecting immigrants in Massachusetts. "Once it passed this summer, we needed to be ready to support municipalities in implementing it quickly," she said, "so I researched all the municipalities in Massachusetts and their current local-level policies with regard to ICE and policing to prepare for that." She also worked on other priority bills around issues including data privacy and preventing book bans, participating in everything from mail drops to legislators to tabling at community events to text bank campaigns, and worked on election protection preparation for the state primaries.

As a Segal Citizen Leader Fellow through Brandeis, Pearl received leadership training and funding and support in the process of finding an internship. The ACLU of Massachusetts typically runs an internship for undergraduate students and law students, but when Pearl and the Segal Fellowship reached out, they were open to taking on an additional graduate student, especially since she was funded by Segal.

Pearl enjoyed the opportunity to learn about a wide range of aspects of local government. "It was a fascinating crash course in local government," she said. "I also got so much exposure to working with really brilliant people in this field and had opportunities to be in rooms I would otherwise not have been in at this phase of my career. I attended an early hearing of a case that went to the Supreme Court about mail-in voting; I saw the PROTECT Act passed; I was a part of coalition meetings and learned about the behind-the-scenes process that makes all this possible." She appreciated all the support provided by her colleagues and supervisors, as well as the Segal Program.

The experience helped Pearl think more about the kind of work she would like to do in the future and the kind of organization she'd like to do it with. "It made me more curious about legislative advocacy," she said. "I also really enjoyed working with an organization that focused on multiple issues under one umbrella of values, since I am interested in a wide variety of topics and social issues."

For other students seeking internships, Pearl said, "Start the search early. It is awesome to have an internship, but funded internships are hard to find. Starting to think about and research opportunities as soon as you can and apply to multiple ones."

Atiqua Prithu, MA in International Economics and Finance, HNTB

Atiqua Prithu, a second-year master's student, spent the summer in North Carolina as a finance intern in HNTB's North Carolina Turnpike Authority client office. "I got exposed to a lot of new things, primarily public and municipal finance," she said. "A lot at the beginning was learning what they do and how the toll system works." As she got up to speed, she worked with the office's compliance and reporting team on their fiscal year 2027 budget report, working across departments to get information on their budgets and to analyze them. Her main project involved asset portfolio management, analyzing the turnpike authority's current assets, comparing them to those of about a dozen other turnpike authorities, and coming up with recommendations. She also got to visit highway and airport runway construction sites, complete with hard hat and vest.

Prithu used support from Brandeis in the internship search process and brought skills from her classes to the role. "One of my friends used to work there and was my connection," she said, "and I had help from Brandeis with my resume and referral skills, which I used to guide my search and application process." Once there, she found her studies "very applicable!" She made use of key principles in areas such as reading financial statements, understanding the bond market and how it applies to asset management, and presenting her work while working for HNTB. At the same time, she applied them to the new contexts of public and municipal finance and funding.

Prithu especially appreciated the opportunity to build connections with a new group of people. "The people really made a difference," she said. "My supervisors were so kind and patient and truly took me on as a mentee. They took the time to teach me how their day-to-day work went and explain different operational processes." She also bonded with her intern cohort, who frequently went on outings together after work.

The internship helped Prithu explore her goals for working in the financial industry. "I'm especially interested in financial planning and analysis, but I'm also interested in impact and sustainable finance," she said. "This internship helped me see how public finance falls into that sector and how one goes about building things that last a long time and benefit the community. It has given me a lot to explore."

Prithu emphasized the importance of a proactive attitude when pursuing internships. "I would suggest relying on your current network and talking to people - put out the word that you're looking for something," she said. Once the internship is landed, she added, "Say yes to everything and look for ways to contribute more - ask if you can help with a project or about different angles. "Go in very curious, make the best out of it, and be very proactive about your work."

Marc St. Pierre, MS in Computational Linguistics, Consensus Building Institute

Second-year master's student Marc St. Pierre created his own internship with the Consensus Building Institute, a small consulting firm focused on multi-stakeholder facilitation and mediation services. With a background in communications and negotiation, he wanted to use the skills from his degree in that field; he came to Brandeis planning to reach out to organizations in Boston doing similar work and to pitch ideas to them. "The Consensus Building Institute was fantastic - they had already developed an internal AI task force and were asking questions I could help answer," he said. In the role they developed together, St. Pierre served as an AI integration consultant, conducting surveys and interviews to understand how the organization's staff used AI and the kinds of issues they had using it, while also prototyping new AI tools and developing a curriculum on how to use them. "In the end, I assessed the organization in the context of the overall landscape of AI use in the knowledge economy and made recommendations for tool use and internal policy," he said.

In the process of pitching himself and his skills to organizations, St. Pierre relied a lot on his fellow students and professors. "I practiced presenting my pitches in front of my friends," he said. "For the projects I was pitching, I got a lot of great feedback from the Computer Science PhD students and the faculty, who helped me refine my ideas in the classes I was taking." The knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs), how they work, and what makes them fail that he has learned in Brandeis courses was also key to his work with the Consensus Building Institute. The program teaches you how to build the kind of tools that people might want, which is incredibly useful and gives a good technical foundation," he said. "But there's a whole different piece about finding out what an organization wants and the best solution. Often people will come in with a pre-formed solution and try to fit the organization to it, and people resist it or don't really use it. What's really important is that I went in without a prebuilt solution - you need to talk to people first and build the solution around their needs."

In this vein, St. Pierre's favorite part of the experience was having one-on-one meetings with people, which he described as "a lot of fun." He worked with staff as they used Claude, giving them real-time feedback about what might be going on behind the scenes when they prompt an AI agent and how they could improve the prompts. "I saw results and aha moments and got a lot of positive feedback," he said.

"My goals for post-graduation are much more refined now," St. Pierre said when asked about what he took away from the experience. "I understand better how I fit in the marketplace for AI and change management specifically. Change management for AI adoption is a big part of the tech field right now, so it's a fantastic opportunity for using people skills and technical skills together! I would love to work with the Consensus Building Institute in the future - it was a fantastic experience and work culture, with a very collaborative environment where everyone was valued for their perspective, however they felt about AI." He is also writing about similar topics on his LinkedIn, reflecting on AI in the workplace.

St. Pierre encourages other students to reach out and pitch themselves for work as he did. "My success came from going a level above looking at internship postings and trying to align what I wanted to do with what an organization needed and was interested in. It wasn't that easy because I had to pitch myself a bunch of times, but being able to reach out and sell yourself is an incredibly valuable skill, helps you practice networking, and puts you in a different category."

Leon Wang, PhD in English, App-Ark

For his required program internship in the fall, fifth-year PhD student Leon Wang worked with App-Ark, a company that helps Chinese students prepare for US college applications. "College in China works very differently than in the US, and the ideas of writing an essay, getting recommendation letters, and showing who you are through extracurriculars are conceptually very new to most students," he said. "With App-Ark and similar companies, the student works with a consultant who gets to know them and helps them through the process of building up their profile, writing their essays, and figuring out how to present themselves." He was inspired to do this kind of work because of his experience helping students proofread college essays and his desire to get involved earlier in the process in order to be more helpful and get a better sense of students' and colleges' needs. Wang had actually worked with App-Ark as a client when he was himself in high school, so he reached out to the company to find an internship opportunity.

As an intern, Wang worked with students who were not yet applying to colleges and were seeking to build up extracurriculars like essay writing competitions. "I would walk them through the competition requirements and talk with them about their ideas and the research process - kind of like advising a thesis on a much smaller scale," he said. "The whole process involves advising someone to work on a writing project, so the research mindset and process is very directly connected to my own experience as a PhD student, only switching the roles." He noted that sometimes the students picked topics he himself knew nothing about, which could be a fun way to learn about new topics.

"Being able to have conversations with the students that worked with me was the best part and made me feel less grim about the college application process," Wang said. "I was frustrated with aspects of the system, but being able to talk with the students directly refreshed my mind about how impressive a high schooler really can be - some really know a lot about their topics! The college application process is very stressful, but working with App-Ark also helped me see that there are still people who are trying to do it in ways that are as honest as possible, for the school and the students." While he is still most interested in looking for a faculty position after finishing the PhD, Wang also found a new interest in potentially working in college admissions, especially since he has now seen the other side of the process.

Wang encouraged other students not to rule out fields with which they are already familiar when looking for internship opportunities. "While an internship is often a way to expand your career horizons, even within a field you think you are familiar with, there are still corners that you might be overlooking," he said. "These can sometimes turn out to be a nice surprise, change your perspective, and give you a sense of what parts of the field you care about."