ATLANTA — The Partnership for Innovation (PIN) has launched its 2026 PIN Summer Internship (PSI) cohort, bringing together a record number of students to work on real-world innovations across the Southeast.
PIN, which is housed at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), is a public-private partnership that connects research and industry with real-world needs. PSI connects students with industry, government, and nonprofit partners to deliver solutions that strengthen local economies and communities.
PIN’s broader mission is to increase access to and opportunity for innovation to drive economic growth around the state and the region. The PSI program supports that mission as it develops the next generation of leaders in public service, innovation, and technology through team-oriented project-based programming, experiential learning, and mentoring.
“Project hosts are proposing innovative projects,” said Cody Cocchi, PIN’s programs manager, “We’re not the experts in the room telling the community what it needs. Local leaders are. Through our internship program, we’re helping develop the next generation of innovators to support that work.”
Interns Connecting and Innovating
Launched in May, the PIN Summer Internship Spark 2026 event brought together the interns and their project leads for networking, education, and information. This year’s cohort includes a record 139 interns from 38 universities across 53 majors, 15 states, and 22 countries. The interns were selected from 875 (another record) applications.
Abdoulaye Barry, a third-year computer science major at Georgia State University is a returning intern and Achieve Atlanta scholar. He’s working at Georgia Tech’s Autonomous and Connected Transportation Lab for a project on sustainable transportation.
“The thing that PIN offers is experience without an insane level of entry,” Barry said. “Last year, my sophomore year, I didn’t have any experience, and I didn’t have any confidence in myself that I could do anything tech related in the real world. PIN says it’s okay that you don’t know anything. They’re here to make you into a developed person for other opportunities in the world.”
Arianna Conton, whose sister was an intern in 2025, is a junior, studying computer information systems at Georgia State. Her internship is with Dark Flower Studios, a photography studio owned by Lynn McIntosh, who photographs and advocates for people with vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder that creates milky-white patches of skin. Conton’s sister’s experience with PIN is one of the primary reasons Conton applied.
“It was the connections that she made that she felt like were truly lovely,” Conton said about her sister’s experience. “Those lasting relationships that she spoke about, that really drew me into this.”
Tackling Community and Innovation Projects Across States
PIN interns are working on 91 projects in 74 organizations across academic institutions, foundations, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private companies in 23 cities in four states, to leverage innovation, technology, and data for the betterment of communities and citizens. Projects include such varied work as creating a small business council in Danville, Virginia, and enhancing farmers markets in Albany, Georgia.
Hossein Taheri, a Georgia Southern University associate professor in the Department of Manufacturing Engineering, is hosting an intern for the first time this summer. The intern is working on a project to develop a digital twin of the battery systems of electric vehicles.
“The community engagement and providing the opportunity for the interns to get involved with innovations with industries, it’s exciting,” Taheri said.
Rachel Dekom is the development specialist and a project lead at Sage D Collective, an Atlanta-based organization that offers leadership and executive development. The company, which has hosted PIN interns since 2024, has six this year.
“One thing that I think PIN does really well is that they are very responsive to the needs of the partners that they work with,” Dekom said. “It’s very difficult sometimes working with large institutional organizations, because you’re trying to fit an internship into a box that has been provided to you by the institutional partner. PIN does a really good job of saying, ‘What do you need? How can we help you build an internship program that actually works for you? How can we partner with you to recruit the right student to fill that role?’”
Speaker Lineup
Speakers at the Spark event, all of whom spoke with encouragement and enthusiasm about the important work of the interns and the project leaders, included PIN Executive Director Debra Lam; Luoluo Hong, the vice president for student engagement and well-being at Georgia Tech; Cheryl Watson-Harris, president and executive director of Achieve Atlanta, a PIN partner; and PIN Advisory Board member and Georgia State Sen. Sonya Halpern (D-39).
“As a state senator, I spend a lot of time in conversations about Georgia’s future,” Halpern said. “How do we remain competitive? How do we build an economy that actually works for more people?”
PIN’s internship program and broader workforce development are components to those questions, she said.
“The states that will lead in the next iteration of this economy are not simply the states with the lowest taxes or the best tax incentive packages or the flashiest headquarter announcements,” Halpern said. “They will be the states that know how to develop people, because talent is one of the most valuable forms of infrastructure that a state can build.”