2025 DEVCOM ARL Summer Student Experience: Enhancing Human Cognition with Foundational Models
Application Deadline: January 12, 2025
Applications must be submitted in Zintellect.
A complete application includes:
- Resume listing your relevant coursework and lab experience as well as all papers, presentations, or publications you may have authored or co-authored. Include any reprints or abstracts if they are available.
- Transcripts verifying current enrollment in an undergraduate or graduate program at an accredited university or technical institute. Original student copies are acceptable.
- Statement of Interest describing your scientific research experience including lab experience and relevant academic coursework. State how this experience intersects with your personal and professional goals.
- Three References formal reference forms are not required for the Summer Student Experience, but names and contact information for references must be provided. During the review process, ARL Selecting Officials may contact references.
This group project aims to enhance human cognition by leveraging foundational models to improve memory, mental model formation, communication, and decision making amongst Soldiers. Students of diverse backgrounds will collaborate in a multi-disciplinary (e.g., computer science, machine learning, neuroscience, psychology, and human-computer interaction) effort to research human behaviors, human-machine interactions, and AI system design. Students will assist with creating novel methods to research and develop human-AI systems interactions that can lead to augmented development and maintenance of situational understanding during complex and dynamic human interactions.
Advisor Email: mariela.m.perez-cabarcas.civ@army.mil
Multi-disciplinary non-medical approaches to understand and modify the potential of humans situated in and interacting within complex social, technological, and socio-technical systems.
The DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Research Associateship Program (RAP) Summer Student Experience (SSE) is an educational program that allows undergraduate through PhD students and recent bachelor’s and master's degree graduates to participate in a paid research experience at a Department of Defense laboratory over the summer break. Participants are paired with scientists and engineers at ARL who are helping to shape and execute the Army's program for meeting the challenge of developing technologies that will support Army forces future operational needs. As a participant in the ARL-RAP SSE, you will be part of high priority research efforts that are broadly supported by 11 research competencies. While ARL has identified several specific research topics, the opportunity for general research may also exist under each competency.
The Army Research Laboratory Research Associateship Program (ARL-RAP) is designed to significantly increase the involvement of creative and highly trained scientists and engineers from academia and industry in scientific and technical areas of interest and relevance to the Army. Scientists and Engineers at the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) help shape and execute the Army's program for meeting the challenge of developing technologies that will support Army forces in meeting future operational needs by pursuing scientific research and technological developments in diverse fields such as: applied mathematics, atmospheric characterization, simulation and human modeling, digital/optical signal processing, nanotechnology, material science and technology, multifunctional technology, combustion processes, propulsion and flight physics, communication and networking, and computational and information sciences.
ARL’s Army Research Directorate (ARD) focuses on exploiting concept development, discovery, technology development, and transition of the most promising disruptive science and technology to deliver to the Army fundamentally advantageous science-based capabilities through ARL's 11 research competencies. This intramural research directorate also manages the laboratory’s essential research programs, which are flagship research efforts focused on delivering defined outcomes.
- Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland (APG)
For questions about the Summer Student Experience Program, please email ARLFellowship@orau.org.
Programming, experimental design, systems design.
- Citizenship: LPR or U.S. Citizen
- Degree: High School Diploma/GED, Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, Master's Degree, or Doctoral Degree received within the last 12 months or currently pursuing.
- Minimum Overall GPA: 2.50
- Academic Level(s): Associate’s Degree (Journeyman Fellow), Bachelor’s Degree (Journeyman Fellow), Master’s Degree (Journeyman Fellow), or Doctoral Degree (Postdoctoral Fellow).
- Discipline(s):
- Age: Must be 18 years old by 5/1/2025



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