After six months at SwissCore, Sophie Widmer and Noah Stanton have completed their traineeships.
“Time flies when you are having fun, but the past six months truly went by too fast. Being part of the SwissCore team as trainees for innovation and research has been a fantastic opportunity to experience R&I policymaking in Brussels from a unique Swiss perspective.
Arriving during the SwissCore Annual Event was definitely a highlight of the traineeship, along with helping to organise the R&I Seminar in January 2026. Through these experiences, we saw policy in practice and understood the importance of maintaining and fostering networks of researchers, innovators, and policymakers across the EU and Switzerland. Being able to celebrate Switzerland’s re-association to Horizon Europe with a proper Swiss Apéro in November made Brussels feel a little more like home.”
Noah’s main focus at SwissCore has been dual-use research and innovation, an exciting and rapidly evolving topic with significant implications for both the EU and Switzerland. His traineeship report examined the implications of dual-use R&I for EU-Swiss relations, mapping trends, governance dynamics, and policy debates through position papers and interviews conducted in Brussels and Switzerland. “This work further sparked my interest in industrial policy and the role research and innovation play in connecting science, politics, and civil society. I now look forward to completing my master’s thesis at the University of St. Gallen which will also be on dual use.”
Sophie analysed the EU’s internationalisation strategy in research and innovation and wrote a comprehensive report on the topic. To develop a solid overview of the strategy, she conducted interviews, attended relevant events, and collected and analysed data. She examined developments in the European Research Area (ERA), the Team Europe approach, and the EU’s Global Approach with third countries in greater depth, with a particular focus on two case studies: South Africa and India. These efforts culminated in a detailed analytical report. She now starts an internship in the science team at the Swiss Embassy in Washington.
“A big thank you to the entire SwissCore team for the support and guidance, especially Laurin Reding and our supervisors Luca Cruciato and Sarah Bühler whose mentorship and encouragement we really appreciated. We will miss the office atmosphere, the lunches with the Norwegians, and all the EU acronyms we still don’t fully understand. It has truly been an enriching personal and professional experience; we leave Brussels with memories and skills that we will for sure carry with us into our next chapter.”