Master of science in ai
Artificial Intelligence Capstone Experience
The Master of Science Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) Capstone is a 1 term, 16-week interdisciplinary team-based online learning experience for demonstrating in-demand workforce skills and exploring new AI methodologies, developing innovative solutions and driving AI adoption for real world challenges and evolving landscapes.
We’re committed to providing students with a rigorous, relevant, and rewarding educational experience and provide students with opportunities to showcase their excellence and develop in demand skills on real world challenges. This capstone provides an excellent opportunity for students to truly apply and test their domain knowledge and expertise over the term learning from your guidance and real-world challenges.
If you are interested in collaboration opportunities like serving as a partner for an upcoming Capstone project, please complete this form. For additional information about the Online Capstone Experience, please contact us at POCapstone@purdue.edu.
Students
The Online Capstone Experience is designed to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your technical and power skills on innovative, real-world projects with leading partners across various industries and research domains. You will work alongside and collaborate with student peers and faculty mentors to tackle these challenges and deliver a professionally formatted project deliverable and presentation to partners, faculty and peers. For more information about the capstone, please contact POCapstone@purdue.edu.
In this capstone experience, you will:
- Gain hands-on experience through student-led, student-designed approaches to real business challenges.
- Focus on governance, industry standards, and best practices in project management, business analytics, and data governance.
- Engage with content developed in alignment with leading industry organizations, such as the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA).
- Explore a range of project options that can align with your interests and career goals.
- Be matched with projects that have been designed to align with a variety of interests and support career growth.
- Benefit from feedback loops and iterative processes that support long-term career development.
Partners
We are seeking partners on real-world, problem-based or project-based challenges to guide graduate student teams in upcoming terms. These projects serve as the Capstone for students completing the online Master’s in Artificial Intelligence program. We welcome partners from academia, industry, non-profit, and the public sector who can:
- Present open-ended challenges suitable for innovative AI application
- Collaborate remotely with student teams
- Provide timely feedback and guidance throughout the 16-week term
Projects do not need to be AI-focused, but should allow students to build towards or explore AI adoption, integration, or application strategies and solutions
Don’t Have a Project? We have project placement opportunities for partner roles!
Have multiple Projects? We offer opportunities for multiple projects or have multiple teams working on a project in a term! We ask that you confirm you have the time availability for each of the separate teams.
If you are interested in serving as a partner for an upcoming Capstone project, please complete this form. For additional information about the Online Capstone Experience, please contact us at POCapstone@purdue.edu.
Highlights of the Online Capstone Experience include:
- Multidisciplinary Teams: Students from AI and Machine Learning or AI Policy and Management Majors collaborate to bring together both technical and managerial perspectives, ensuring a well-rounded approach to each project
- Focused Effort: Graduate Student Teams + Purdue Faculty Mentor
- Flexible: 100% remote, asynchronous communication, while also offering optional opportunities for synchronous collaboration
- Learning Experience: Focused on innovative, real-world applications, this experience is grounded in the technical learning and expertise of our Purdue faculty. Please note that outcomes may vary and are not guaranteed
- Student Design and Development: Our diverse student population representing a wide range of industries and many with leadership experience will collaborate to identify, design and test potential solutions to read-world challenges
- Showcase Excellence: Student Presentations and professionally formatted artifacts
- 500+ hours of graduate-level effort per project mentored by Purdue Faculty
- Networking and new talent pipeline with graduating students as they design and implement project solutions
- Leverage multidisciplinary teams to provide new perspectives across industries and experiences
- Flexible, remote collaboration based on where you are and your schedule
- Explore and test creative solutions without the cost or time required for internal teams
- Assess the value of new strategies with experienced graduate students in a low-risk, learning experience
- Professional Deliverables including presentations and artifacts tailored to your project needs
- Partner Support with dedicated Capstone staff to help through the process
We encourage collaboration across various partner types and research disciplines to drive innovation and inform or assess AI policy. The projects themselves do NOT need to be in an AI focused domain. Some sample innovative approaches, from AI Use Taxonomy NIST AI 200-1 , that students could use to tackle these proposals, may include one or more of the following:
| • Content Creation | • Discovery | • Personalization |
| • Content Synthesis | • Image Analysis | • Prediction |
| • Decision Making | • Information Retrieval/Search | • Process Automation |
| • Detection | • Monitoring | • Recommendation |
| • Digital Assistance | • Performance Improvement | •Robotic/Vehicular Automation |
We ask that project partners commit to having a representative available throughout the academic term to respond to student questions electronically within 1–2 business days. While asynchronous communication is the primary method, synchronous meetings with the student team may be arranged by mutual agreement. We also encourage partners to provide timely feedback on student deliverables throughout the term. While additional deliverables may be established in collaboration with the student team, the following are the core requirements for all students:
- Students will develop and present a project proposal around the midpoint of the course, outlining their approach and planned outcomes
- Final deliverables and a presentation near the end of the term
All accepted projects will be required to complete a Sponsored Project Agreement (please note, this is not a contract). Participants will collaborate with the Assistant Director of the Purdue University Online Capstone Experience to finalize all necessary materials and ensure all required documents are signed and submitted for the term. For more information about the capstone, please contact POCapstone@purdue.edu.
Our graduate student teams have tackled a wide range of real-world challenges, delivering innovative, AI-driven solutions across industries. Some examples:
- AI Adoption Strategy for New Product Development: Conducted feasibility analysis, strategic planning, and pipeline evaluation to guide first-time AI integration into a new product offering.
- Scalable AI-Enhanced User Experience: Designed and implemented AI personalization features and user flow improvements to boost engagement and adoption of an educational knowledge base.
- AI-Powered Career Exploration Game: Developed a prototype game for workforce exploration, including a training pipeline for video and image detection to support interactive learning.
- AI Tutor & Assessment Tool for CTE Learners: Built a plug-and-play RAG-based application to enhance learning outcomes and assessments in Career and Technical Education environments.
- LLM-Driven Patent Commercialization Pipeline: Automated licensee discovery and outreach using large language models, streamlining innovation portfolio management and increasing commercialization efficiency.
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