New MSAI Students Excited To Expand AI Knowledge

The newest cohort of students in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) program arrived on campus in September and are already deep into their first quarter in the program. Before the quarter progressed too far, we checked in with the students to find out what drew them to MSAI and how they say  learning about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science will prepare them for their careers after graduation. 

What was it about MSAI that initially appealed to you? 

"The combination of technical and applicable materials, as well as the industry connections, is what was appealing about MSAI." — Tianchang Li

"I wanted to expand my skills and knowledge in AI while leveraging my experience in ML and data science." — Srik Gorthy 

"I am fascinated by the idea of using AI to improve outcomes of patients struggling with heart disease. This program gives me the opportunity to work alongside a group of highly motivated, intelligent computer scientists who have domain expertise in an area that I think will increasingly make its presence known in the healthcare space." — Josh Cheema

What are you most looking forward to about your MSAI experience?

"I'm excited to collaborate with industry partners as a part of our practicum in intelligent information systems, our summer internship, and our capstone project to learn how to build successful AI solutions that tackle real-world challenges. I'm looking forward to identifying the pressing problems in AI that I can build solutions for." — Anery Patel

"The natural language processing, deep learning, and neural network courses and projects are what I'm interested in. I am particularly looking forward to working with certain professors in this field at Northwestern." — Ayushi Mishra 

"I am looking forward to working on in-class projects, the summer internship, and the capstone project, and to learn and align my focus on delivering impactful and meaningful work that adds value to users." — Srik Gorthy

In what ways do you think MSAI will prepare you for what you want to do professionally after graduation? 

"MSAI will give me the technical expertise and practical exposure required to work as a data scientist or ML/AI engineer." — Ayushi Mishra

"Training ML models from scratch will prepare me by giving me a deeper understanding of the math and implementation behind such algorithms." — Keshav Bhandari 

"I believe this training and way of thinking will position me to lead change in healthcare and help integrate AI into the clinical space." — Josh Cheema