Ana Ferreira, a Master student at the University of Luxembourg, recently successfully completed a summer internship at STATEC. In her internship Q&A, Ana shares her experiences and future career plans with us.
Watch Ana’s internship Q&A
Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
My name is Ana and I am 22 years old. I am from Portugal and I did my bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Currently, I am pursuing a Master programme in Finance and Economics at the University of Luxembourg. I am rpassionate about Statistics and Econometrics therefore my purpose is to pursue a career in those areas. I am also doing the EMOS programme (European Master of Official Statistics) while specialising in the track of Financial Economics.
Could give us some details about your internship and the company you worked for?
My summer internship was 5-weeks long and is part of the EMOS programme as one of the requirements to get this label. I was integrated in the MAC5 team at STATEC managed by Mr. Olivier Thunus, who was also my tutor during the internship. The objective of my project called “Head in the stars” was to create a satellite account for Space Economy in Luxembourg.
What were your tasks?
Over these 5 weeks, I had the opportunity to be fully integrated in STATEC work environment and meet professionals from different divisions inside the company. Furthermore, I could ask lots of questions and learn more about the internal composition of STATEC and its employees.
My main tasks were creating a good research base and learn more about Space Economy and the space sector in Luxembourg. In fact, we are entering in the phase of the new space economy where start-ups and new innovative companies play a central role. Moreover, we focused more on the services and commercial part of space. The goal is to see if Luxembourg is embracing this new era of new space economy or not and to create statistics for Space Economy in Luxembourg. After gaining comprehensive knowledge of the subject, the aim was to create indicators that could be measured and where we could create statistics in this area to identify the main companies and actors of the Space Sector in Luxembourg.
How did the internship enable you to put in practice what you learnt during your study program?
It was really helpful to get to know the work environment of a big company such as STATEC and to understand how each division relates to another and the different roles that a team has in each project.
I could use my acquired statistics knowledge for finding the indicators needed and how we could measure them and find the data (always taking into account problems like double counting or gaps in data). In addition, I had to read and interpret a lot of data and graphs on Space Economy created by other countries like the US, Canada and Australia to be able to have a comparison in the future and to see how other countries created statistics on this topic. During the first year of my Master, I had a lot of quantitative oriented subjects that helped me to interpret the data and methodologies applied by these countries in their statistics. Over the years, I also had to do complex papers and research other articles and bibliography which made it easier to create this research base for Space Economy and organise the bibliography for this topic.
What will you remember from the internship? Anything unusual or that was enriching / interesting / fun fact?
Overall, it was a amazing experience for me.I learned a lot of new things and I am beyond excited and motivated for the second part of the internship.The atmosphere at STATEC is very professional, yet very pleasant, and I felt that I was always supported and could benefit from the experiences of people from all divisions, but especially from those of my team (MAC5).It was nice to see the good company environment and how everyone gets along really well with each other and how every division is connected and welcoming for new workers.
It was also incredibly interesting to see how closely Mr. Thunus accompanied my project and was so welcoming and gave me the opportunity to express all my ideas and discuss them with such interest and guidance. At the same time, I also had the opportunity to work in an autonomous and independent way where I felt like the manager of my own project, while being just an intern, which helped me develop my skills even more. I was fascinating to get to know the Census process and office, the research division at STATEC with such an international team and profile and finally the internal library of STATEC that had a lot of interesting and unique books and articles.
Could it be a possible career path for you?
I must admit that I fell in love with this new topic of Space Economy, and it would be exciting for me to pursue a career in this area, as I am eager to learn more about it. Also, as I am extremely passionate about Statistics, creating statistics for this topic has been a great opportunity for me to explore my passion.
Currently, my goal is to write a good Master Thesis and create a pioneer project at STATEC to continue to create statistics and better understand space economy, especially the new Space Economy, in Luxembourg.