Industrial Immersion Exchange program
AI Sweden, Dakota State University (DSU), and Chalmers University of Technology offer the opportunity to gain international and industrial experience in AI and cybersecurity as part of a travel and housing covered summer and academic credit-bearing internship in Sweden and the U.S.
Students
This talent program will return in summer 2026, and applications for students are now open.
The application closes on February 12th 2026.
AI Sweden partners
Support a team solving your AI challenge. Contact Sofia Hedén to join. Learn more here.
The cohort of 2025. Learn more about the student projects completed in 2025.
AI and cyber security challenge
For the fifth summer in a row, AI Sweden, Dakota State University (DSU), and Chalmers University of Technology, offers this research exchange program for graduate students from Sweden and the US (MSc and PhD). This is a unique opportunity to get international experience and solve real challenges provided by the industry. Academic credit, lodging, and airfare are included.
The duration of the program is 10 weeks. Four weeks, starting at the end of May 2026 will be spent at AI Sweden's facilities in Gothenburg. This is followed by some time for travel and four weeks at the Madison Cyber Labs at DSU. Students are expected to participate fully on-site in both Gothenburg and Madison.
Students eligible for consideration must currently pursue their MSc or PhD degree in Computer Science or related fields and have an interest in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
Since the talents are working on real-world challenges, we’ll be able to implement the results directly into our organization — and that’s a huge win for us.
Maria Lidholm Skruf
Security Coordinator, Group Digitalization Office at Västra Götalandsregionen
What can participating talents expect?
During the program, participants will be introduced to a challenge around AI and cybersecurity. Students from Sweden and DSU will work together in teams to create common ground from which the team can develop their future work. Additional information about the specific industrial projects will be provided to candidates who are accepted into the program.
- International Experience: Solve real-world challenges in diverse, mixed teams.
- Impactful Projects: Tackle a unique challenge in cybersecurity and AI.
- Comprehensive Support: Access faculty advisors, guidance from industry experts, state-of-the-art tools, and a dedicated workspace.
- Networking Opportunities: Connect with professionals, mentors, and like-minded peers.
- Academic Credits: Earn credits (15 ECTS) from Chalmers University of Technology.
Participating in the program was a great experience. I faced new challenges and learned a lot about cybersecurity. Working with people from different countries and educational backgrounds was very enriching. I gained insights into how things operate in the USA and improved my networking skills. Through AI Sweden, I met many knowledgeable professionals in the engineering field, which broadened my perspectives.
Emily Blixt
Participant 2024, Student at Chalmers University of Technology
What can participating AI Sweden partners expect?
AI Sweden, DSU, and Chalmers will facilitate the project with faculty, advisors, mentors, hardware and software tools as well as physical spaces in Sweden and the US for the student teams. The participating organizations will define the industrial challenges and provide support for the teams.
- Work with a team comprising US-based and Swedish students, solving real-world AI and cybersecurity challenges defined by your organization, and tailored to fit your organization's specific needs.
- Gain access to a pool of talented individuals who have already been vetted and selected for their skills and potential.
- Potential continued research in thesis projects or doctoral studies and/or future recruitment opportunities.
- Partners are expected to pay a fee covering the costs for the team, and program administration.
Reach out to Sofia Hedén if your organization is interested in supporting the Industrial Immersion Exchange program participants.
Stakeholders benefit from fresh insights and innovative approaches to emerging challenges, thanks to the diverse expertise and cutting-edge academic knowledge brought by the international teams of students. This unique blend of collective brainpower and varied academic backgrounds often leads to breakthrough developments. This collaboration also provides companies with the opportunity to identify and recruit future employees who have already demonstrated their potential.
Dr. Mary Bell
Dean of The Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences at Dakota State University
The summer program has allowed us to get a head start on the upcoming phase of our LeakPro project pertaining to attacks on text-based AI models. The students have explored various possible directions and distilled a report outlining the current state-of-the-art, shortcomings of current approaches, especially in regards to benchmarking datasets, and even presented their own, novel, algorithm that is competitive with state-of-the-art attacks. This report will serve as the starting point and guiding source for the next phase of our project.
Johan Östman
Research Scientist at AI Sweden
Learn more about the student projects completed in 2025
Västra Götalandsregionen (Security)
This project created an AI tool to help employees at Västra Götalandsregionen (VGR) understand and follow cybersecurity and AI rules. It acts as a helpful guide, providing clear, action-based advice and a way to learn more about regulations. The tool is a working prototype that aims to inspire future projects to make compliance easier for everyone.
Project team: Richard Nunstedt, Aleksandr Billey and Frida Piscator Pettersson.
Volvo Group & Västra Götalandsregionen (Honeypot)
This joint project used AI to create a self-attacking cybersecurity system. They built a fake computer system, called a honeypot, to trick a specialized AI attacker into showing its methods. This process generated a huge amount of data on how cyberattacks work. The results showed that using AI for both attack and defense can create more realistic and valuable information for building smarter security systems.
Project team: Nnaemeka Igwe, Sackarias Lunman, Daniel Stoopendahl, Leonie Grafweg, Mason Dana, Nils Backlund, Panagiotis Makris and Zeliatu Ahmed.
Swedish Air Force
This project developed a drone swarm that defends an area like a colony of bees. Using special AI training methods, the team taught the drones to work together to spot and respond to threats. After many training runs, the final system can autonomously patrol an area, showing that AI can be used for effective and coordinated defense.
Project team: Marcus Hansen, Angela Slattery, Sofie Wiklund and Gustav Lundberg.
Centiro Group
This project explored the use of AI to automatically assess cybersecurity risks for businesses. The team developed two different approaches to tackle this problem. Both solutions showed promising results, providing valuable insights into how companies can better prioritize threats and strengthen their security. The work serves as a foundation for future projects to build on these ideas.
Project team: Marius Vangeli, Lisa Holländer, Nathalie Borglund and Sai Ram Vodnala
Case New Holland
This project is building a local AI tool to help a cybersecurity team simulate cyberattacks. The team implemented an advanced language model and created a unique "response editing" feature. This feature allows the user to directly change the AI's response as it's being written, which is a powerful way to get around the AI's safety rules and guide it to provide specific, useful information for attack simulations.
Project team: Edward French, Moa Kallén, Aman Singh and Lukáš Brůna (missing from picture).
The 2024 cohort
See the final presentations from the cohort of 2024
- News article from Dakota News Now: DSU and students from Sweden present AI and cyber research findings (2024)
- Read about last year's projects on My AI
- DSU Graduate Student Exchange Program
- Madison Cyber Labs
For more information, contact
