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Meet interns and thesis students creating real business value

Nils Olofsson Portrait

Each year, Stegra welcomes numerous interns and master’s thesis students to join an ambitious scale-up environment. Contributing to projects and research across a wide range of business areas, interns and master’s students deliver genuine business value while also furthering their education.

For Nils Olofsson, who in 2022 was still a student at Lund University in southern Sweden, a master’s thesis at Stegra (then known as H2 Green Steel) would be an opportunity to get his foot in the door at an exciting industrial startup. “I was studying renewable energy engineering and knew about Northvolt, of course,” he says. “When I heard about H2 Green Steel through a Swedish podcast, I was instantly curious.”

Writing his thesis about carbon emissions from Stegra’s construction site in Boden, Nils’ was impressed by the level of responsibility he was given. “It was great to be able to do something that matters and adds real value to the company,” he says.

Now a sustainability analyst in the company’s Sustainability & Corporate Affairs team, Nils mentors interns and master’s thesis students himself: “We put a lot of time into it, and we get a much better result.”

We give interns and master’s students a unique opportunity to come into a scale-up environment, where they can work closely with senior team members and management. They create real business value. And it’s not just that it’s real work, it’s also paid.

Karl SegergrenTalent Acquisition Specialist

Master's student Melav Salih presents her research on the impact of the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Lisa Thor is a master’s student in electric power engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She returned for a second internship in 2023 after completing a first in 2022. “I developed a lot during my first summer,” she says. “I was inspired by my colleagues and really into the project. With my supervisor Fredrik Engström, I was given the chance to dig even deeper into the subject since I found it so interesting.”

In her second year, Lisa came back to a company that had evolved as it had grown.

It was a totally different experience, I guess more representative of typical employment. Rather than having a single project, I had a closer collaboration with the team and was able to contribute through different tasks and research. Going forward in my career, the goal is really to work with electric power engineering with a sustainability focus. And Stegra showed me what that looks like.

Lisa ThorMaster's student, KTH

Sustainability has also been key for Pino Kirsch. He is a master’s student at KTH who started as an intern in summer 2023 and contributes hydrogen-focused research for H2 Green Steel’s Technology team. Coming from Germany, where he had done work in the automotive industry, Pino wanted to do something with a genuine sustainability focus.

 

And at H2 Green Steel, he got that, contributing research for the green hydrogen plant under construction in Boden. “So far everything I have done has been relevant and contributing to the company’s core business,” he says. "It's motivating to know that I am helping something that is creating real impact."