Build Projects: From Zero to Prototype: Bring Your Software Startup Idea to Life

Sentence embedding models have a wide variety of use cases in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) landscape, such as to facilitate vector search of unstructured text for semantically similar entries, or within a larger model to enable tasks such as regression or classification on free-text.

During this project, you will devise a prompt to generate a synthetic dataset to fine-tune a pretrained sentence embedding model to address deficiencies in the domain-specific use-case of embedding job titles. You will then use this dataset to fine-tune your pretrained model and evaluate the improvement in performance for the vector search task. Finally, you will deploy your fine-tuned model within a Streamlit web app, allowing you to easily show your model to anyone.

This project will help build your familiarity with basic prompting techniques, querying LLMs and parsing their outputs through an API, as well as popular Machine Learning and NLP frameworks (such as Hugging Face and Sentence-Transformers) and provide a compact end-to end experience from initial prototyping to dataset gathering, to training and evaluation, and finally deployment, covering the core parts of common workflows for a Data Scientist or ML Engineer.

Drone Mounted with 3D Surface Scanner for Aircraft Structural Inspections

aircraft-maintenance, drones, unmanned-aerial-vehicle-uav, structural-inspections, cad

Teja Swaroop Reddy Seelam

and 1 more

Integrate a 3D Surface Scanner along with a high-definition camera on a drone to aid in Aircraft structural inspections to improve accuracy, accessibility, safety and aircraft maintenance turnover.

Aerospace Engineering Fellow

For an airline, aircraft structural inspections play a pivotal role in ensuring structural integrity and aerodynamic smoothness, making it critical for its daily operations to be run in a highly safe and efficient manner. Some of these structural inspections include but are not limited to, detailed inspection of aircraft skin waviness for aerodynamic smoothness, dents, lightning & bird strike inspections, corrosion & sealing inspections, loose/damaged fastener inspections along with damage classification and repair limits.

In this build project you will wear the hat of an airline maintenance engineer to explore use cases of integrating a 3D surface scanner to perform aircraft structural inspections. Under the supervision of an experienced industry expert, you’ll start by identifying gaps in traditional structural inspections, develop a solution and carry-out feasibility studies. You’ll become familiar with an airline maintenance program, manuals, 3D CAD modeling software, and FAA’s regulations. All this will happen in an environment that simulates the operations of a real airline maintenance engineering team.

Public Equity Valuation and Investment

equity-research, game-theory, financial-modeling, valuation-techniques

Bill Cui

and 1 more

Learn to evaluate a publicly traded company and produce an investment recommendation.

Finance Fellow

Detailed analyses and accurate predictions based on fundamental understanding of a company are key to becoming a successful public equity investing professional. In this Build Project, you will wear the hat of a fundamental analyst and develop investment recommendations about a publicly traded company’s stock. Under the supervision of an experienced industry expert, you will dive deep into understanding the company’s business model, evaluating its business strategies and competitive landscapes, analyzing its financial data, and predicting its future growth potential. You will also become familiar with tools such as Python to conduct statistical analysis on macroeconomic data and apply various valuation methods in Excel to support your investment theses. The analytical and modeling skills gained from this project will help you become more competitive in the recruiting process for a junior equity investment role.

From Zero to Prototype: Bring Your Software Startup Idea to Life

user-experience-design, user-interface-design, user-research, digital-design, design-prototyping

Arun Ganesan

and 1 more

Develop a software startup idea into a prototype by researching the problem, understanding users, and designing effective solutions iteratively.

Computer Science Fellow

You have a software product idea that you want to develop into a real product. Where do you even start? The truth is that it’s straightforward once you learn the process. It helps if you have Computer Science, Software Engineering, Design or Business or have previously acquired skills in one of these areas.

Every day, talented people work on countless software startup ideas, yet most fail. Using tools like the design process and user research can help teams move quickly and avoid common pitfalls that derail projects. In this Build project, you’ll take on the role of a digital product designer, applying the design process to software development. You’ll start by researching users, move through ideation sessions and ultimately build a prototype to pitch to a wider audience. The outcome will be an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)—not necessarily a finished product, but a foundation to introduce the essential tools and methods needed to build one successfully.

After 8 weeks, you’ll be able to apply this process to develop product ideas in any industry and tackle various problems. If you’re pursuing product manager or product designer roles, this project will also serve as a valuable addition to your portfolio.

Developing Bio-based (CNSL) Cellular Products

sustainable-materials, materials-processing, polymer-engineering, materials-science

Abdul Al Alawi

and 1 more

Transform cashew nutshell byproducts into sustainable cellular materials that address environmental needs while showcasing innovative uses in various industries.

Materials Engineer Fellow

In the rapidly evolving field of sustainable materials, addressing environmental impact through innovative solutions is crucial. In this Build Project, you'll wear the hat of a Materials Engineer and develop bio-based cellular products using cashew nutshell liquid as a key component.

Under the supervision of an experienced industry expert, you'll prepare and test various sustainable materials, learning to apply cutting-edge analytical methods like FTIR and Karl Fischer. You'll become familiar with industry-standard techniques for material characterization and production, all within an environment that simulates real-world engineering challenges and team dynamics.

Important Details:

‍No Physical Materials Required: Students will not need to purchase any materials or conduct physical manipulations during the project; everything will be conducted online.
Free Software: All analyses will utilize free, readily available software tools, ensuring no additional costs for participants.
Project Format: The project will include a mix of pre-recorded instructional videos, live webinars for Q&A sessions, and interactive online discussions, alongside access to digital resources to support your learning.

Design an End-to-End Housing Price Prediction Machine Learning System

predictive-modeling, real-estate-analytics, machine-learning, cloud-computing

Nischal Subedi

and 1 more

Design an end-to-end housing price prediction machine learning system and deploy final model artifact using AWS Sagemaker.

Data Science Fellow

Predictive modeling is a critical skill for data scientists, widely used across various industries. In real estate, predictive analytics and valuation modeling are gaining momentum, with both startups and established companies increasingly adopting data-driven approaches to forecast housing prices.

In this Build Project, you will retrieve, clean, and preprocess real-world housing data, transforming it into a format suitable for machine learning. You will explore and visualize the data to gain insights, then apply supervised learning algorithms to predict the sales price for each house. Throughout the project, you'll focus on optimizing model performance through feature selection and hyperparameter tuning. Additionally, you'll deploy your final model using AWS SageMaker, making it accessible via cloud infrastructure. This hands-on project will not only enhance your predictive modeling skills but also give you practical experience in cloud-based machine learning deployment.

Legal Analysis and Writing: Legal Memorandums and Briefs

legal-writing, legal-analysis, legal-research

Nataly Rahmo

and 1 more

Acquire proficiency in legal writing, as well as legal analysis and research to enhance your critical skills.

Law Fellow

You will learn legal writing to organize research, create outlines, and draft legal documents such as memorandums and briefs at the end of the project. In this Build Project, you will understand the basics of legal writing and its importance in the legal field. You will write down a legal paper: a memorandum or brief. This assignment will require you to complete research plans, writing outlines, document summaries, and writing assignments. You will also develop advanced writing, research, and analysis skills and a deep understanding of legal concepts. These skills can be integrated into their professional and academic pursuits, gaining valuable expertise in the process. You will also get acquainted with multiple legal search engines and be able to conduct successful research assignments.

Law 101: Primer to Practicing Law – Analytical Thinking and Legal Writing

law, legal-writing

Joo Hee Park

and 1 more

Develop the skills needed to be a successful law student through analyzing case law, preparing a legal memo, and advocating for your client.

Law Fellow

This project is designed for students who aspire to work in the legal industry. Practicing law has its unique features that students cannot know until they get a hands-on experience of what it’s like. How is “legal writing” different from writing any other essays or research papers? How is “legal research” different from any other research? How is reading case law and court decisions different from any other papers? Law Students spend an entire year (or more) to learn these skills. The project allows you to get a head start in gaining these skills, in a more simplified, beginner-friendly way. You will develop a legal memo as a final deliverable, which will include your analysis of cases, and its application to the matter at hand, and your position in advocating for your client. It can be used as a writing sample which will be handy in applying for law schools and/or internships or other law office positions that do not require an attorney license.At the end of the 8-weeks session, you will feel more confident applying for law schools or jobs in the legal industry.

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Arun Ganesan

Fine-Tune a Job Title Embedding Model using Synthetic Training Data

Design an End-to-End Housing Price Prediction Machine Learning System

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From Zero to Prototype: Bring Your Software Startup Idea to Life

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Arun

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Arun Ganesan

Fine-Tune a Job Title Embedding Model using Synthetic Training Data

Design an End-to-End Housing Price Prediction Machine Learning System