Break Through Tech AI
Overview
The Break Through Tech AI Program helps undergraduate college women (trans and cis), nonbinary, and other underrepresented groups in tech gain the skills they need to get jobs in the fastest-growing areas of tech: data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Developed by industry and academic leaders, you will master the skills necessary to become a successful Machine Learning Engineer. Complete our ML Engineering curriculum over the summer and complete industry projects hosted by leading companies during the academic year. Along the way, you will learn practical, industry-relevant skills that will help qualify you for entry-level jobs in the field, including building data analysis pipelines, and utilizing common ML and AI tools and libraries to train and validate ML models. At the same time, you will receive career coaching, mentorship, and summer internship placement support, all aimed at helping you successfully launch your career in machine learning and AI.
We acknowledge the historic and systematic barriers for Black, Latina, Indigenous, low-income, first-generation, and other marginalized people in tech, and we value diversity, equity, and inclusion as integral to our mission. We’re here to make tomorrow’s technology safer and inclusive. But we need your participation to do it.
The 2024-2025 Break Through Tech AI Program will run at three sites across the country:
- Boston at MIT Schwarzman College of Computing (for students attending institutions in the greater Massachusetts region)
- Los Angeles at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering (for students attending institutions in Southern California)
- Virtual (for students attending institutions located outside of the greater Massachusetts region and Southern California)
Please Note: The Boston and LA programs are hybrid and have some in-person components. Virtual alternatives can be provided to select in-person components (this is different from our 100% virtual program which is not open to students attending institutions in the greater Massachusetts region or Southern California)
How It Works
Are you interested in building machine learning workflows to solve real-world problems? In this 9-week, skills-based summer course, you’ll work with industry-relevant tools to analyze real-world data sets, identifying patterns and relationships as you create robust data science projects. Once you master the data science basics, you’ll move on to using several common machine learning tools to approach real-world business problems, build your own ML models, train, and implement these in the most effective way. Upon completion of the course, students in good academic standing will receive a certificate from eCornell.
During this part of the program (June-August 2024), you should expect to spend about 10 hours per week completing asynchronous, online modules and 3 hours per week participating in synchronous lab sessions. Labs will take place in-person at your host institution for the Boston and LA programs, and via Zoom for the Virtual program.
What you’ll do:
- Articulate the complete data science life cycle end-to-end
- Build a dataset that is suitable for ML applications and understanding your data through exploratory analysis
- Learn how to use industry-relevant ML tools and libraries
- Learn core ML algorithms and develop intuition on trade-offs between different algorithmic choices
- Select ML model evaluation metrics, hyper-parameters for testing, and run model selection to choose the best model amongst candidates
- Learn more advanced ML models and navigate design decisions and constraints to perform agile model development
- Investigate how deep learning can be used in ML and train and adapt neural networks to take advantage of different types of data
- Understand the responsibility of ML engineers to improve the fairness and accountability of ML models
During the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters, you’ll be invited to join AI Studio where you’ll work in teams to tackle business challenges from leading companies. Our industry partners include a mix of leading companies and organizations working in different industries at the forefront of ML and AI, including Accenture, American Express, Google, JP Morgan Chase, Pfizer, and more.
Based on your unique skills and interests, we’ll match you with a relevant project where you will work with large-scale, real-world datasets to train, test, and evaluate machine learning models to make predictions. Guided by academic and industry advisors, you’ll present your solutions to people experts in the field. All projects will result in technical artifacts that you can add to your portfolio that will serve as a “credential” to show future employers what you can do.
During this part of the program, you can expect to spend about 5 hours per week developing your project. You will also be required to attend monthly Saturday Maker Day events (9am-5pm), which occur on-campus at your host institution for Boston and LA programs, and synchronously via Zoom for the Virtual program.
What you’ll do:
- Apply the ML skills that you learned in your summer ML Engineering course
- Identify and dissect real-world business problems with real-world data and evaluate the ways that they can be addressed using ML and AI
- Collaborate in small teams to develop, test, and iterate on solutions to business problems using ML and AI
- Synthesize and convincingly present your solutions to industry experts
- Add artifacts to your portfolio demonstrating your capabilities and experience
Getting your first job in machine learning and AI takes more than raw technical capability. To support your professional goals, you will work closely with an industry mentor in a small-group to engage in real-world case studies, skill-building simulations, and receive personalized feedback. Your mentor, a data science, ML, or AI professional, will be by your side as you cultivate your authentic leadership and social capital and ensure that you are on track to land a summer internship and full-time employment.
Additionally, you will receive access to our career development resources and career coaching and placement support from Break Through Tech to prepare your portfolio, apply for internships, and practice for your interviews.
During this part of the program (August 2024-April 2025), you can expect to spend about 1 hour per week completing online skill-building workshops as well as one 90 minute synchronous small-group meeting (virtual for all programs) with your mentor each month.
What you’ll do:
- Learn about technical roles within data science, ML, and AI domains and their requirements
- Develop job search methodologies to identify, evaluate, and apply for summer internships or full-time roles
- Create and revise your professional portfolio, including your resume, LinkedIn profile, GitHub profile, and more
- Prepare and practice for coding and ML interviews
- Grow your professional network within the AI/ML field
- Prepare to get the most out of your internship experience
Break Through Tech Boston is hosted by MIT Schwarzman College of Computing (Cambridge, MA). The 2024-2025 cohort will include 250 participants. See below for more detailed information about the program key dates and logistics.
*Key Dates will be updated in January 2024*
Schedule:
- Summer 2024:
- Course Dates: Late May – Mid August
- Weekly Lab Days/Times: One weekly 3 hour lab session
- Location: Labs will take place in-person at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing campus.
- Fall 2024-Spring 2025
- In-Person Events: All in-person events will take place at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing campus.
Contact Malorie Bournazian at malorie@mit.edu with any questions about the AI Program at Break Through Tech Boston.
Break Through Tech Los Angeles is hosted by UCLA Samueli School of Engineering (Los Angeles, CA). The 2024-2025 cohort will include 250 participants. See below for more detailed information about the program key dates and logistics.
*Key Dates will be updated in January 2024*
Schedule:
- Summer 2024:
- Course Dates: Late May – Mid August
- Weekly Lab Days/Times: One weekly 3 hour lab session
- Location: Labs will take place in-person at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering campus.
- Fall 2024-Spring 2025
- In-Person Events: All in-person events will take place at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering campus.
Contact Nicole Feliciano at nfeliciano@g.ucla.edu with any questions about the Los Angeles program.
The Break Through Tech AI Virtual Program is for students attending institutions outside of Massachusetts and Southern California. The 2024-2025 cohort will include 450 participants. See below for more detailed information about the program key dates and logistics.
Schedule:
- Summer 2024:
- Course Dates: Late May – Mid August
- Weekly Lab Days/Times: One weekly 3 hour lab session
- Location: Remote (Zoom)
- Fall 2024-Spring 2025
- All events will take place virtually over Zoom.
Contact the Virtual Program team at ai@breakthroughtech.org with any questions about the Virtual Program.

Curriculum Author
Brian D’Alessandro is a practicing Data Science executive with 20 years of experience building machine learning and statistical models for industrial decision making. Brian currently leads Data Science for Instagram’s Equity and Social Impact programs. Prior to Instagram, Brian held leadership roles at Capital One, Zocdoc and Dstillery. Within these roles, Brian led the development and execution of AI and ML systems enhancing digital experiences serving healthcare and financial service needs.
Brian has also served as an adjunct professor for NYU’s Center for Data Science Master’s of Data Science program. Brian developed and taught core ML classes for incoming master’s students and has helped over 1000 students start their careers as Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers.
PROGRAM CONTRIBUTORS

Sponsor
Break Through Tech’s AI Program is funded by Melinda French Gates’ company Pivotal Ventures, Ken Griffin, Citadel and Citadel Securities, the Hopper-Dean Foundation and New Venture Fund.
Who Should Apply
- Undergraduate students registered at an accredited college or university. Please note: Students graduating from a 4-year degree earlier than Spring 2025 are not eligible to apply.
- In addition to all female-identifying and non-binary students, students in other underrepresented groups (Black, African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, non-traditional, and first-generation college students) are welcome to apply.
- Applicants should be planning to major in CS, mathematics, engineering, or a related STEM discipline
- Applicants should have an interest in learning about artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data science
- Applicants should have previous programming experience; familiarity with introductory Python a plus
Apply Now
The application for the 2024-25 program will open in January 2024. You can express your interest and join our mailing list by filling out this form. Please email ai@breakthroughtech.org with any questions.