Intern - Social Innovation and Special Projects Team

Job Posting Organization:
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945, currently comprising 193 member states. Its mission is to promote peace, security" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted #007bff !important;">security, and cooperation among nations. The UN operates in various fields, including humanitarian aid, development, and human rights, with a workforce of over 44,000 employees worldwide. The organization is committed to addressing global challenges and fostering international collaboration to achieve sustainable development goals.

Job Overview:
This internship is designed for individuals interested in gaining practical experience within the United Nations, specifically in the Social Innovation and Special Projects Team (SISPT) of the Policy and Best Practices Service (PBPS) in the Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training (DPET). The intern will engage in applied research at the intersection of multilingual natural language processing (NLP), cross-cultural AI alignment, and field-deployable computing. The role involves contributing to the development of portable computing and sensing capabilities for humanitarian data collection, as well as designing inclusive language technologies for low-resource and multilingual settings. The intern will work closely with team members to support various projects aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of peacekeeping operations through innovative technological solutions.

Duties and Responsibilities:
The intern will be responsible for a variety of tasks, including:

• Supporting the design of a portable compute platform that integrates various sensor modalities for field data collection.
• Documenting hardware-software interface specifications and data schemas for multi-sensor ingestion.
• Exploring applications relevant to humanitarian response, environmental monitoring, and community health.
• Contributing to the design of data pipelines, storage schemas, and governance protocols for the social innovation pilot.
• Prototyping intelligent document retrieval and automated reporting capabilities.
• Applying principles of inclusion, integrity, safeguards, and sovereignty in the design of digital public infrastructure components.
• Establishing reproducible engineering practices, including version control and documentation.
• Researching and developing approaches for multilingual language understanding and translation in low-resource peacekeeping contexts.
• Designing and executing participatory methods for eliciting culturally specific norms and values from underrepresented communities. 1
• Building and curating datasets that capture cultural and linguistic variation. 1
• Developing alignment and evaluation methodologies that account for cultural pluralism. 1
• Contributing to a research paper documenting methods, experiments, and findings.

Required Qualifications:
Applicants must meet one of the following criteria: (a) be enrolled in or have completed a graduate school program (second university degree or equivalent, or higher), or (b) be enrolled in or have completed the final academic year of a first university degree program (minimum bachelor's degree or equivalent). A field of study closely related to the internship is required, with preferred fields including computer science, computational linguistics, machine learning, or computational social science. Candidates from social-science backgrounds with strong computational skills will also be considered. Applicants must provide proof of their academic status and relevant qualifications.

Educational Background:
Candidates must be students in the final year of their first university degree (bachelor or equivalent), or enrolled in or have completed a Master's or Ph.D. program. The educational background should be relevant to the internship, particularly in fields such as computer science, computational linguistics, or related disciplines. Proof of enrollment or completion of the required degree is necessary for the application process.

Experience:
While professional work experience is not required for this internship, applicants should possess programming skills in Python, R, or an equivalent programming language. Familiarity with model fine-tuning, evaluation design, and alignment techniques is preferred. Experience with participatory or community-centered research methods is considered an asset. Additionally, any research experience in NLP, multilingual language modeling, or cross-lingual transfer should be highlighted in the application.

Languages:
Fluency in spoken and written English is required for the internship, as English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. Knowledge of an additional official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, or Spanish) is advantageous and may enhance the candidate's application.

Additional Notes:
This internship is unpaid and is designed to be in-person and full-time (35 hours per week) on the United Nations premises in New York, USA. However, it can be adjusted to part-time (20 hours per week) and/or remote based on the successful candidate's needs. The internship duration is initially set for two months for full-time positions and four months for part-time positions, with the possibility of extension up to a maximum of six months. Interns are responsible for their own travel, visa, accommodation, and living expenses. The United Nations is committed to achieving gender balance and encourages female candidates to apply. Interns who are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States may need to obtain a G-4 visa or other appropriate work authorization.