Projects

A.I. - First -- this course will prepare you to succeed in today’s AI-first organizations by aligning core projects with real-world business needs and modern AI workflows. Each project immerses you in a different business domain—finance, healthcare, and web-based sales—and culminates in the production of a data- or AI-driven product.

You won't just learn about AI and data science—you will build, explore, and deliver meaningful outputs that resemble what employers are asking for today. Projects simulate professional roles in analytics, operations, and product strategy, with increasing complexity and autonomy. The final capstone project prepares you to clearly communicate your skills in a job interview, supported by a portfolio-worthy product and story.

Skills: We emphasize practical tool use, teamwork, iterative exploration, and the creation of tangible outputs with business value. 

Project Summaries:

• Project 1: Predictive Modeling for Loan Repayment (Finance)
  Students will create a predictive machine learning model to improve loan decision-making at a peer-to-peer lending company.

• Project 2: Recommending New Apartment Rental Office Locations 
  Students will use AI and traditional analytics (Exploratory Data Analysis, or EDA) to explore and combine large location datasets and recommend the best cities for new office locations for student apartment rental companies.

• Project 3: AI Agent for Internal Knowledge Use (Web Business)
  Students will build an internal-facing AI agent that helps with job searches.

• Project 4: Reverse Pitch – Create value by solving a business problem
  Businesses present a problem, which groups are tasked with solving. Students will work in teams, to create a machine learning model or AI agent that solves a business problem, culminating in them giving their pitch to the business. 

Takeaways & Job Preparedness

These projects are designed to be interview-relevant and resume-ready. Students graduate from the course able to say:

• “I’ve built a machine learning model that improved business decisions.”

• “I’ve discovered meaningful insights from a messy, real-world dataset.”

• “I’ve built and deployed a functional AI agent using LLMs for internal business use.”

• “I can present and explain my work through the lens of business impact.”

This course delivers a fast-paced, modern immersion into the world of AI-driven data work—designed for students to be productive in AI-first organizations.