Do you want to do a project with some great Northwestern students?

In late March 2024, a class I co-run at Northwestern will kick off about 15 projects with companies and non-profits. We call this class Client Project Challenge. I’ll write more about this later, too, but I wanted to get you thinking about it now.

Our student teams have previously worked with organizations like UPS, Ferrara Candy, and Lurie Children’s Hospital.

The students do great work. To see this, check out this four-and-a-half-minute video with interviews from clients and students. Or, see the class website. Or check out this quote from one of the clients from last year, Sunario (a “software company [that uses] climate simulation for energy investment, portfolio strategy, and business insights.”). Sunairio posted our student’s success on their website. To quote the website, the students built “…a probabilistic wind turbine icing model that quantifies the risk of [icing] events (in terms of probability of capacity factor loss) as a function of weather.”

The class is required in our IEMS (Industrial Engineering and Management Science) program. (I would lump this program firmly under the big tent of practical AI). We have our Juniors take the class— so you can interact with students before they make decisions about their first jobs. We aim for teams of 4, but you can expect 3-5. The class runs for ten weeks, from late March to early June.

Students will have taken core classes in probability, statistics, statistical learning and data analysis (machine learning), optimization, stochastic models, and discrete event simulation.

Typical projects could include forecasting, throughput analysis, facility layout and location, transportation, inventory, scheduling, or any problem needing a model built to help with a decision.

Besides this class, there are many other ways to engage with our students and faculty. These include machine learning projects in our Masters in Machine Learning and Data Science program (these start again next Sept), internship programs (including with our Masters in Engineering Management program), sponsoring Ph.D. students, guest lectures, our Center for Deep Learning, our Transportation Center, and many others. Here is a short video describing what our department does.

Feel free to drop me a note if you want to talk more.

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