Master of Science
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Purdue’s innovative Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (AI) prepares professionals for success in today’s tech-focused job market — and equips them with the skills needed to meet the demands of a rapidly-evolving future.
Ready to Dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence?
MS in AI
Demystify AI by building practical
experience and foundational skills
Whether you’re interested in the technical capabilities, implementation, and ethics of AI, or you’re just beginning to explore the field — this program delivers foundational knowledge that applies across industries, including engineering, business, communication, and more. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how AI systems function, how they’re deployed, and how they influence decision-making across organizations.
- Students will develop foundational knowledge and practical experience in the realm of artificial intelligence and computing.
- Students will learn professional skills including leadership, change management and project management.
- Students will learn technical skills including computer programming and principles of machine learning.
- Students will gain expertise in the areas of data mining, data analysis and data management.
- Students will be able to articulate ethical and policy principles of artificial intelligence and apply it to their work.
Delivered 100% online, this program leverages the expertise and research excellence of Purdue’s West Lafayette faculty and academic community, ensuring you receive a high-quality education with the flexibility modern professionals need.
Designed for today’s AI workforce
Artificial intelligence is one of the fastest-growing fields, with increasing demand for professionals who can both build AI systems and apply them strategically. Purdue’s interdisciplinary approach ensures you graduate with a well-rounded skill set that bridges technical expertise and business understanding.
This program is designed to support two key career paths: those who want to build AI technologies and those who want to leverage AI to drive innovation, improve processes, and inform decision-making. By addressing both, the program helps close the growing skills gap and prepares you for high-impact roles across industries.
Choose a Path That Fits Your Goals
Select from two different tracks tailored to your background and career interests:
- The AI and Machine Learning major focuses on programming, computer science, and mathematics, helping you build, evaluate, and deploy AI systems.
- The AI Management and Policy major is designed for those without a coding background, focusing on leadership, strategy, ethics, and governance.
This dual-track approach allows you to align your education with your career path—whether you want to build AI technologies or lead organizations that implement them. It also creates a more accessible entry point into AI for professionals from a wide range of industries and experience levels.
Ready to learn more?
Take our readiness self-assessment to evaluate your skills and start your journey to success!
Take the first step toward mastering artificial intelligence with our tailored self-assessment tool. This resource was designed to align with the program’s learning outcomes to help you evaluate your current skills in basic programming, intermediate programming, advanced programming, and math and probability.
Program Facts at a Glance
Source: LightcastTM (2025). Unique job postings for July 2024-25. Projected growth for years 2019-2029.
Explore the Majors
Latest in AI research
Improving life and wellness through innovation
To face the world’s most pressing challenges, Purdue University has committed its signature strengths in science and technology to creating a leading research and education program in physical AI — the application of artificial intelligence to our physical world.
Here’s just a sample of the work coming out of the many hubs across campus.
AI Success Stories
Educator and mom hopes to influence technology ethics in Purdue’s online Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence program
Tamara Grant’s journey to becoming a student in Purdue’s online Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (AI) program started at a Walmart in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where she worked second shift as a cashier, saving money and practicing her English so she could go back to school.
Faculty
Petros Drineas
Petros Drineas is a Professor and Associate Head in the Computer Science Department of Purdue University. He earned a PhD in Computer Science from Yale University in 2003 and a BS in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras, Greece in 1997. Drineas’ research interests lie in the design and analysis of randomized algorithms for linear algebraic problems, as well as their applications to the analysis of modern, massive datasets. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and was a Visiting Professor at the Sandia National Laboratories during the fall of 2005, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles in the fall of 2007, and has also worked for industrial labs (including Yahoo! Research and Microsoft Research).
Chris Clifton
Chris Clifton is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include data mining, data security, database support for text, and heterogeneous databases. Dr. Clifton works on challenges posed by novel uses of data mining technology, including data mining of text, data mining techniques applied to interoperation of heterogeneous information sources, and security and privacy issues raised by data mining. Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Clifton was a Principal Scientist in the Information Technology Division at the MITRE Corporation.
Alan J. Zillich
Dr. Zillich graduated with a BS and Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from Purdue University. Then, he completed four years of post-graduate training. First, at the University of Kentucky, he completed a general practice (PGY1) residency and a specialty residency in ambulatory care (PGY2). Then, he completed a health outcomes research fellowship at the University of Iowa Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine. He has served on NIH and VA grant review panels and provided leadership on the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Research Institute Board of Trustees. He has published more than 110 peer reviewed publications and been awarded more than 4 million dollars in research grants.
Upinder Kaur
Upinder Kaur is an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE). She earned my Ph.D. in Technology from Purdue University, West Lafayette, where she conducted research in the Collaborative Robotics Lab under the guidance of Prof. Richard Voyles. Her work reimagines cyber-physical systems (CPS) with robots as the mobile and dextrous edge, realizing a richer reactive interface between the physical and the cyber world.
Cherie Maestas
Cherie D. Maestas, is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Previously she served as the Marshall A. Rauch Professor of Political Science and Director of the interdisciplinary Public Policy Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2000. Dr. Maestas received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2000. Her current research examines how emotions and personal characteristics (e.g. emotion regulation, personality traits, political predispositions) moderate the effects of media messages and policy framing.
Kyle Hultgren
Kyle Hultgren is the founding director of the Purdue University College of Pharmacy’s Center for Medication Safety Advancement. Dr. Hultgren is a co-author of a process improvement program in partnership with Purdue University and the United States Veterans Health Administration that has been provided to thousands of professionals in health systems nationwide. His current research includes extensive work on dashboards and measurement systems for evaluating and improving medication use systems and integration of publicly available social media data as potential surveillance signals. As a result of this work, he led his Center through the creation of SafeRx, a large, curated, relational database containing millions of adverse drug events.
Stephen Leitch
Stephen Leitch, PhD is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Purdue University, teaching business classes in Consumer Science and Hospitality Management. His teaching and research interests cover revenue management, marketing, and big data. He has won several innovation in teaching awards and holds strong ties to industry and the business community. He is also the Assistant Director in the Centre for Hospitality & Retail Industries Business Analytics at Purdue, speaker at many events, reviewer for several top journals and consultant on various industry projects. In addition to academics, Stephen founded and sold several retail/ecommerce businesses and is Executive Director for Millie’s Mission, a not-for-profit group of stores in Indiana.
Bryce Dietrich
Bryce Dietrich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and research scholar at the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship and Engagement (CCSE). His research uses novel quantitative, automated, and machine learning methods to analyze non-traditional data sources such as audio (or speech) data and video data. Professor Dietrich’s work has appeared in the Nature, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and Political Psychology. This work has also received grant support from major organizations, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and was recently a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and Northeastern University.
Dilip Chhajed
Dilip Chhajed serves as the Associate Dean for Online Programs and Strategic Innovations and as the Executive Director of the BS in Integrated Business and Engineering program. He spearheads the development and management of all online programs at the Daniels School of Business. Currently, the portfolio of online programs at DSB encompasses an MBA, MS in Business Analytics, MS in Global Supply Chain Management, MS in Human Resource Management, MS in Economics, and nine Graduate Certificates. Chhajed obtained his PhD from Purdue University, an MS from UT-Dallas, and a B.Tech from IIT Bombay. He has had the privilege of teaching at the University of Warsaw in Poland, Sogang University in South Korea, Purdue University, and GISMA in Hanover, Germany.
Daniel Schiff
Dr. Schiff is an Assistant Professor of Technology Policy at Purdue University’s Department of Political Science and the Co-Director of GRAIL, the Governance and Responsible AI Lab. Dr. Schiff studied Philosophy at Princeton University, focusing on robotics and intelligent systems, before completing a Master’s in Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and PhD in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology. As a policy scientist with a background in philosophy, he studies the formal and informal governance of AI through policy and industry, as well as AI’s social and ethical implications in domains like education, manufacturing, finance, and criminal justice.
Gianna Lint
Gianna Lint is a doctoral student in Purdue University’s Polytechnic Institute, and she’s applying her expertise in process improvement towards human trafficking research. Gianna Lint is a Six Sigma black belt, which means that she is an expert in process improvement. She holds multiple patents for a variety of consumer products available in stores today.
Corey Maley
Corey Maley is an associate professor of philosophy, coming to Purdue from the University of Kansas. He spent some years as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska, quadruple-majoring in computer science, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, and getting both a B.S. and a B.A. for all that effort. He then worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab at Washington University in St. Louis, where he learned to do real science, as well as appreciate that his talents primarily lie in being a philosophical consumer—rather than producer—of science. He then went to graduate school at Princeton University, getting his Ph.D. in the Logic and Philosophy of Science program in the philosophy department. Corey’s primary focus is on foundational issues in the philosophy of computation and the sciences that use computation as a conceptual framework for understanding other phenomena.
William R. Watson
With a background in computer information and technology, Dr. Bill Watson’s experiences teaching undergraduates fresh out of high school led him to transition to the field of education, where his initial focus on educational video games as a form of engaging instruction expanded into how technology can be used to leverage the realization of a new paradigm of education – one focused on personalized learning. He collaborated on the design of Purdue’s digital badges platform, Passport, which has was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, Campus Technology, and U.S. News and World Report. The Director of the Purdue Center for Serious Games and Learning in Virtual Environments, he was nominated and selected as one of the Center for Digital Education’s Top 30 Technologists, Transformers, and Trailblazers for 2015 and gave a TedXPurdueU talk in 2014 describing the new paradigm.
Xingyu Li
Dr. Xingyu Li’s academic journey began with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol, where he graduated as the top student with a GPA of 4.00. This laid the foundation for his pursuit of higher education, leading him to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Here, he earned his Master’s degree in Industrial & Operations Engineering, maintaining an impeccable GPA of 4.00. Building upon this strong academic background, he continued his academic journey at the University of Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.
Laura Moffat
Dr. Moffat is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the School of Nursing. Laura earned her Doctorate from Purdue School of Nursing in 2021. Dr. Moffat’s DNP work focused on using artificial intelligence to predict in-hospital cardiac arrest. Dr. Moffat developed a class to explore the use of AI in healthcare with a project designed to use AI to predict cardiac arrest in hospitalized adults. Since joining, Dr. Moffat has taught undergraduate nursing courses, including Nursing Essentials, Health Alterations in Adults I, Health Alterations in Adults II, and Nursing Leadership. Laura is an advanced practice nurse specializing in adult geriatrics as a Board-Certified CNS; she came to Purdue after working at IU Health, where she oversaw nursing Policies and best practices for the three hospitals in the IU Health West Central region.
Lindsey Hamm
Lindsay Hamm earned her PhD in Sociology from North Carolina State University in 2018. She joined the Purdue Sociology department in 2017 as a Continuing Lecturer and moved into a Teaching Assistant Professor position in 2022. Her research is focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. She is currently working to create and train an artificially intelligent (neural-network-enabled) grader to give students feedback on early drafts of written assignments. The project is creating a deliverable while researching student and instructor perceptions of working with AI and pinpointing where biases enter the feedback and grading processes.
Sorin Matei
Dr. Sorin Matei studies the relationship between information technology, group behavior, and social structures. His current interests focus on modeling and simulating the role of communication and information processes in collaboration and conflict, spanning from knowledge production to military command and control. His most important book, Structural Differentiation in Social Media studied 10 years’ worth of Wikipedia editing or 250 million individual contributions to the site.
Milind Kulkarni
Milind Kulkarni is the Michael and Katherine Birck Head of ECE and a Professor with the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. His research area is Programming Languages and Compilers, and his interests lie specifically in developing languages, compilers and runtimes that support efficient programming and high performance on emerging complex architectures. He is also one of the founding members of the Center for Programming Principles and Software Systems, which brings together researchers from programming languages, formal methods, and software engineering along with our collaborators in fields like AI, security, and computational science, to tackle the grand challenges of building effective software.
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