Andrew Martin ’26 dives deep into telecom risks
One of the first Carolina Diplomacy Fellows, the senior became an expert on the vulnerability of underwater cables.
Andrew Martin ’26 has always been interested in how the world works.
At Carolina, he double-majored in political science and peace, war and defense in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences and pursued a wide range of opportunities. He was determined to make the most of his Tar Heel education, learn about the world and hone skills to help him succeed in global affairs.
“Through the speakers that have come here through the Diplomacy Initiative, I learned how broad international affairs is,” Martin said.
Martin worked closely with other Diplomacy Initiative student workers to support programming, and to connect and mentor his peers. (Photo by Huth Photo)
Global Affairs and peer mentorship
He first joined UNC Global Affairs as a student employee, coordinating Diplomacy Initiative programming behind the scenes, then became a member of the inaugural class of Carolina Diplomacy Fellows and a peer mentor for the program.
“Andrew provided guidance for Carolina Diplomacy Fellows on courses, campus involvement, and internship and research opportunities,” said Emmy Grace, program manager for global education. “He worked with other peer mentors to develop and implement creative community building activities like a negotiation game, where he blended real conflict issues with a Tar Heel twist.”
Martin has had two winning submissions in the Policy Brief Competition, examining undersea telecommunications cables (by himself) in 2025, and cyberattacks in Moldova (with his classmates) in 2026. (Photo by Huth Photo)
Undersea cables and policy briefs
He also traveled with political science teaching professor Robert Jenkins on the Burch Field Research Seminar in the Balkans and Vienna and later took his class on trans-Atlantic security. “That was on my bucket list for a long time since I studied abroad with him after my freshman year,” Martin said.
In two separate classes, Martin explored the topic of undersea telecommunications cables, vital for the internet but also vulnerable to attacks. In 2025, he turned his undersea cable studies into a policy brief and submitted it to the annual Policy Brief Competition. Martin won the competition for the independent submission category, with the alumni judges praising the timeliness and meaningfulness of his work.
Working with collaborators, he submitted another brief for the 2026 Policy Brief Competition. “I was working with a group of similar students, and we settled on cyberattacks in Moldova,” he said. They won.
Martin credits his time as a Carolina Diplomacy Fellow with giving him a more nuanced understanding of diplomacy and foreign policy. (Submitted photo)
Studying global security in graduate school
Martin’s openness to new experiences continues to push him out of his comfort zone. In his junior year, he added a minor in geographic information sciences, which led to a job in environmental policy research at the Data Driven EnviroLab led by Angel Hsu, associate professor of public policy.
“Since working there, that’s really the direction I’ve wanted to go — working with geography, working in a very data-oriented environment,” Martin said. “I didn’t want to take calculus, but now I spend all day in Python and R, which I think is really ironic.”
Today, Martin sees himself working at the intersection of foreign policy and data, a niche that reflects both his technical skills and global interests.
“Something that has always stood out to me about Andrew is his curiosity and quiet ambition,” said classmate Kate Klinger ’26. “He is not always going to be the loudest person in the room who makes their presence known, but he will reliably be the most curious and intentional.”
After graduation, Martin will spend the summer working in Washington, D.C., before pursuing a master’s degree in security studies at Georgetown University this fall.
If he could go back in time, he would give himself this advice in his first year at Carolina: “Go for it. Throw a Hail Mary. Let’s see what comes out of it because there’s going to be something really good.”
