Build Projects: Pitch Your Own Startup: From Theory to Practice

In the construction industry, accurate estimation of materials like concrete, steel, and brick is essential for project planning and budgeting. By designing a worksheet to estimate these materials, you will tackle a real-world challenge faced by construction companies daily. This project not only will give you practical skills crucial for success in the field but also fosters critical thinking, attention to detail, and problem-solving abilities essential for your professional development. Additionally, mastering estimation techniques enhances your employability and prepares you to contribute meaningfully to construction projects upon entering the workforce. In today's U.S. society, where infrastructure development and construction projects are essential for economic growth and societal well-being, professionals equipped with such skills play a vital role in driving progress and meeting the evolving needs of communities across the nation.

Launch a Space Finance Program: How Securitizations Will Drive Space Travel

excel-modeling, financial-data-analysis, financial-research, securitization-technology

Florian Georg

and 1 more

Gain a practical understanding of structured financial products by engaging in the modeling and calibration process using Excel. This project offers a comprehensive learning opportunity, combining theoretical knowledge with practical application, empowering students to navigate the complexities of structured finance with confidence and proficiency.

Finance Fellow

Are you intrigued by the dynamic world of finance, where decisions made today can shape the economies of tomorrow? Welcome to our space finance project, where we dive deep into the intricate mechanisms of securitized financial markets, investment strategies, and risk management techniques. Embark on a journey that challenges your intellect and sharpens your analytical skills as we explore topics ranging from capital structure optimization to rating agency arbitrage. Through hands-on exercises, real-world case studies, and collaborative discussions, you'll gain invaluable insights into the principles that drive global financial systems. Whether you're a seasoned enthusiast or just beginning to explore the world of finance, this project promises to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate the complexities of today's financial landscape.

Under the supervision of an experienced industry expert, you'll learn how financial analysts assess risk and investors decide where to put their money to work. You'll become familiar with Excel modeling, scenario analysis and the structured products methodology. All this will happen in an environment that simulates the operations of a real investment team.

Identify the Potential Applications of Spatial Genomics

molecular-biology, biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals

Yi Sun

and 1 more

Analyze the technology advancements in the spatial genomics field and explore their potential industry applications.

Molecular Biology Fellow

Spatial transcriptomics, acknowledged as Method of the Year by Nature Methods in 2020, is poised to bring transformative changes across diverse domains such as biological research, pathology, diagnostics, drug discovery, and therapeutics. In this Build Project, you will wear the hat of a Research Associate and perform a comprehensive case study to demonstrate the potential applications of spatial genomics in understanding health and disease. Under the supervision of an experienced Molecular Biology Scientist, you will conduct literature research to identify the potential applicable areas of spatial genomics. You will gain an in-depth understanding of molecular biology tools, such as FISH, next-generation sequencing, and spatial omics technologies, and how they can be utilized in a real R&D team in the biotech industry.

Product, Contracting, and Dollar Flow in the U.S. Healthcare Industry

healthcare-industry, life-science, drug-pricing, pharmaceutical-supply-chain

Ranganath Narayanan

and 1 more

Build an overview of product, contracting, and dollar flow between key stakeholders in the U.S. healthcare industry.

Health Services Fellow

The landscape of the US healthcare industry resembles a complex and fragmented puzzle with various types of pieces. Numerous stakeholders, including healthcare providers, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and government agencies, contribute to a system that often appears intricate and challenging to navigate. The intricate web of regulations, varying payment structures, and the multitude of players involved can make understanding the flow of dollars, products, and contracts seem like solving a 1000-piece puzzle without edge-pieces.Imagine that a pharmaceutical organization that partners with Company X, has reached out asking for support to provide an overview of the value drivers of key stakeholders in the healthcare industry and the flow of product, dollar, and contracts between these stakeholders that they plan to use to train their salesforce new hires. This information will provide a foundation for their salesforce that will help them navigate conversations with healthcare providers, hospital administrators, and payers. You are part of the Company X team and will have to work on this challenge.

In this project, you will first describe the roles, responsibilities, and value drivers of key stakeholders in the healthcare industry including Beneficiaries, Pharmacies, Wholesalers, Payers, Providers, Manufacturers, Funders, and Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and then create a visually appealing flowchart that accurately represents the flow of product, dollar, and contracting between them. This is an opportunity for you to understand the value that each of these stakeholders provide to the healthcare system and how they co-exist to finally provide affordable and quality healthcare services to patients. After completing this project, you will get a deep understanding of the intricacies of the US healthcare industry, develop strong strategic thinking, research, and analytical skills, and improve your ability to communicate your knowledge and insights gathered in a clear, specific, and visually appealing format.

Learn to Create an Investment Memo for a Gaming Startup

investing, finance, gaming

Kevin Eun

and 1 more

Perform financial, market, industry, and operational due diligence to analyze a gaming investment opportunity

Finance Fellow

Any young career specialists who want to work in Venture Capital find it hard to understand how to break into this industry. One of the things that help a lot is having a prior VC experience. In this Build Project, you will wear the hat of a Venture Capital Analyst and prepare an investment memo for a potential gaming startup to perform financial, operational, and market due diligence. Under the supervision of an experienced Build Fellow, you will learn how a potential gaming startup investment opportunity will be analyzed and discussed to ultimately decide whether or not to invest. You will become familiar with financial modeling, operational modeling and various research methodologies that will aid you in your conclusion. All this will happen in an environment that simulates the operations of a real investment committee in a venture capital firm.

Analyze the Market Potential of a Biotech Startup

biotechnology, startups, finance, due-diligence

Anjanei Dhayalan

and 1 more

Evaluate a biotech startup and learn to think like a Shark from Shark Tank.

Natural Sciences Fellow

In this Build Project, you’ll act as a Biotech Analyst, creating an Investment Research Thesis for a biotech company. Guided by an experienced Build Fellow, you'll conduct research, perform due diligence, and develop analytical models to assess the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and market trends. You'll gain hands-on experience with industry tools, clinical trial data, and financial modeling. This practical experience offers essential skills for understanding biotech startups and navigating their risks and opportunities.

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

natural-language-processing, transformers, fine-tuning, large-language-models-llms

James Alner

and 1 more

Generate synthetic training data using an LLM API to fine-tune a SBERT-based embedding model to cluster similar job titles, evaluating the improvement in the embedding’s performance for retrieval.

Data Science Fellow

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.

Integrating Large Language Model (LLM) Service Using Python

python, software-development, apis, large-language-models

Yuan Sun

and 1 more

In this project we will write Python code that integrates with third-party Large Language Model (LLM) to solve real-life problems, for example automatic email replying.

Computer Science Fellow

With the rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the tech industry, mastering the ability to integrate these models into software solutions has become a key skill for developers. In this Build Project, you'll wear the hat of a Software Developer and build an automated email reply system using Python and third-party LLMs. Under the supervision of an experienced industry expert, you'll write code to integrate LLMs with email systems, enabling the generation of contextually accurate responses in real time. You'll become familiar with API integration, natural language processing, and automation tools. All this will happen in an environment that simulates the operations of a real AI-driven development team, giving you valuable experience in a growing field.

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.

Social Signals: Unlocking E-commerce Trends

data-engineering, e-commerce-analytics, social-media, python

Shubham Dubey

and 1 more

Build a data pipeline that aggregates and analyzes e-commerce and social media data to provide actionable insights for AI startups, empowering them to enhance customer engagement and drive strategic growth.

Data Science Fellow

As e-commerce and social media become increasingly intertwined, startups face the challenge of extracting meaningful insights from vast amounts of data to inform their strategies. In this Build Project, you'll step into the role of a Data Engineer, tasked with building a comprehensive data pipeline that aggregates and analyzes customer behavior and market trends. Under the guidance of an experienced industry expert, you’ll develop Python scripts for data extraction, transform data for analysis, and load it into a structured database. You’ll become familiar with essential industry tools and methodologies like SQL and data visualization techniques, all within an environment that simulates the operations of a real data analytics team. This hands-on experience will equip you with valuable skills that are highly sought after in today’s data-driven landscape, making you a standout candidate for future roles in data engineering and analytics.

Law School Writing and Advocacy

legal-writing, legal-research, oral-arguments, networking

Mélodie Han

and 1 more

Gain the essential advocacy, analytical and legal writing skills needed for law school success through this preparatory program designed to guide you from admissions to your first year of law school.

Law Fellow

This is a pre-law project designed for college freshmen and sophomores to develop a practical understanding of lawyering and build analytical and advocacy skills. The first weeks of the project will focus on demystifying the law school admissions process. You will then develop an appellate brief that can be used as a writing sample for your future career endeavors. You will also present oral arguments in a simulated courtroom environment. This project emphasizes research, writing, and oral advocacy, providing you with the opportunity to analyze complex legal cases, formulate well-reasoned arguments, and participate in structured debates. More importantly, this project will serve as a preview of what you can expect during your year of law school. You will refine your analytical thinking, writing, and public speaking abilities. By the end of this project, you will have gained critical skills in research, writing, and argumentation, directly applicable to entry-level roles in law, public policy, and various sectors that value clear communication and analytical precision.

Conducting, Crafting and Analyzing Impactful Email Campaigns

marketing, crm, emailing, data-analysis, content-creation

Chloé Rudez

and 1 more

Understand the fundamental aspects of digital marketing and CRM, design an email campaign based on a pre-established strategy and evaluate key performance indicators.

Market Research Fellow

Join a hands-on project where you'll explore the exciting world of digital marketing and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). You'll get to practice important CRM skills, like managing customer information and building strong relationships with them. As part of the Build Project, you'll create your own email campaign that matches your marketing goals. You’ll also learn how to use data to understand if your campaign is successful. This means you’ll dive into key performance indicators (KPIs) to see what’s working and what’s not, helping you improve future campaigns.

By learning how to segment (or divide) your audience, personalize your messages, and run A/B tests (comparing two versions of something to see which works better), you’ll develop the ability to create marketing campaigns that really connect with different types of people. These skills are super valuable for entry-level jobs in today’s job market, making you a strong candidate for companies that want to build great relationships with their customers.

Create a Strengths-Based Company Culture

personnel-organizational-training, change-management, talent-management, employee-development

Silvia Schweinoester

and 1 more

Explore strategies for identifying employees’ strengths and integrating them into their roles to foster a strengths-based company culture.

Business Management Fellow

By the end of the 8-week project, students will develop a comprehensive 'How-to Guide' for creating and sustaining a strengths-based company culture, based on their experiences with personality tests and talent management practices. A template will be provided to guide them through the process.

Throughout the project, students will engage in various activities including analyzing personality tests, identifying individual strengths, and applying talent management practices. Key deliverables will include a strengths assessment, an implementation plan for fostering a strengths-based culture, and regular reflections on their learning process.

Building Engaging Compliance Training: Developing an Interactive Quiz for Regulatory Awareness

learning-and-development, employee-training, compliance

Ruth Purcell

and 1 more

This project focuses on developing a learning material to help employees understand and comply with key workplace regulations, including anti-harassment policies, data protection, and workplace safety.

HR Business Fellow

With workplace regulations increasingly under scrutiny, organizations are prioritizing compliance to protect both employees and the business. Understanding and adhering to policies around anti-harassment, data privacy, and safety are now essential components of a healthy workplace culture. This Build Project will guide you through the process of designing a compliance training tool, focusing on creating an interactive quiz that reinforces knowledge about critical workplace regulations such as anti-harassment policies, data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR), and safety standards.

Over the course of 8 weeks, you will work on developing content, building quiz questions, and incorporating learning design strategies to ensure the material is engaging and easy to retain. By the end of the project, you’ll gain practical experience in both compliance and training development, equipping you with skills to build effective, engaging learning materials that foster a safer and more compliant workplace.

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Rik Abels

Launch a Space Finance Program: How Securitizations Will Drive Space Travel

Product, Contracting, and Dollar Flow in the U.S. Healthcare Industry

Learn to Create an Investment Memo for a Gaming Startup

Analyze the Market Potential of a Biotech Startup

Public Equity Valuation and Investment

Conducting, Crafting and Analyzing Impactful Email Campaigns

Create a Strengths-Based Company Culture

Building Engaging Compliance Training: Developing an Interactive Quiz for Regulatory Awareness

The Art and Science of Profitable Product Development

Making an Investment Recommendation That You Will Not Regret

Financial Valuation: What’s the stock really worth?

Portfolio Playbook: Cracking the Risk-Reward Code

Your application

Pitch Your Own Startup: From Theory to Practice

Description

Session timeline

What you will learn

Project workshops

Prerequisites

Sign up today

Apply to

Rik

's project today!

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Rik Abels

Launch a Space Finance Program: How Securitizations Will Drive Space Travel

Product, Contracting, and Dollar Flow in the U.S. Healthcare Industry

Learn to Create an Investment Memo for a Gaming Startup

Analyze the Market Potential of a Biotech Startup

Public Equity Valuation and Investment

Conducting, Crafting and Analyzing Impactful Email Campaigns

Create a Strengths-Based Company Culture

Building Engaging Compliance Training: Developing an Interactive Quiz for Regulatory Awareness

The Art and Science of Profitable Product Development

Making an Investment Recommendation That You Will Not Regret

Financial Valuation: What’s the stock really worth?

Portfolio Playbook: Cracking the Risk-Reward Code