Ten Years of French Engineering Interns at UW

Ten years of collaboration with the University Centre of the Westfjords continues with focus on ocean modeling and science communication

Five marine engineering students from SeaTech Toulon in France are now in the final weeks of a four-month internship in Ísafjörður, set to conclude on August 1st. The group is part of a long-running collaboration between the University Centre of the Westfjords (UW) and SeaTech Toulon, a Mediterranean-based engineering school specializing in marine and coastal systems.

This partnership began in 2015, when the first intern from SeaTech arrived in Ísafjörður. Since then, Björn Erlingsson — who at the time worked on coastal flood modeling for the Icelandic Meteorological Office — has supervised students from the program almost every year.

Over the years, SeaTech students have contributed to a variety of ocean modeling projects in the Westfjords, including a detailed simulation of water movement in Skutulsfjörður. That model has taken into account factors like temperature, salinity, tides, and seasonal variation, and has been used to test different scenarios — such as whether an algal bloom in Ísafjarðardjúp could drift into the inner fjord.

In past years, the interns have also worked on ways to make complex data accessible to non-specialists, using color-based visualizations and, in one case, even sound. This kind of public communication work aligns closely with coastal and marine management, a key subject in UW’s master’s programs. The field places strong emphasis on public engagement in environmental planning — something that requires translating scientific knowledge into formats the wider community can understand and use.

“Engineers may know how to do the calculations,” says Erlingsson, “but it’s just as important to present that knowledge in a way that others can understand.”

Last year marked the program’s busiest season to date, with 13 interns participating. While this summer’s group is smaller, the four-month placement still contributes approximately 1.5 person-years of work. Some former interns have even returned to work in Iceland — including one who later joined the Avalanche Centre before beginning a PhD at Uppsala University in Sweden.