A curated multidisciplinary team of Wharton and Penn students, ranging from undergraduates to MBAs, works alongside a Wharton mentor and your company champion on an 8-week project to explore your real-world business challenge using your datasets and the latest techniques including machine learning and AI. Accelerators occur during the fall and spring semesters and are typically planned six months in advance.
Benefits
Company Applications
If your team is facing a complex analytics or AI challenge, we encourage you to apply the AI & Analytics Accelerator. Participation in the Accelerator is through a paid Student Research Partnership. After you submit an application, a member of our team will contact you with next steps and pricing information.
Eligible nonprofit organizations may qualify for reduced-cost project placements, subject to availability.
“The results from our AI & Analytics Accelerator project were truly outstanding. We were so impressed with our student team. What was discovered was actionable and well thought out. McDonald’s is eager to implement the students’ recommendations and assess the impact.”
Jola Oliver
Director of Global Social Listening & Measurement, McDonald’s Corporation
How it Works
Join the AI & Analytics Accelerator
Secure your spot by becoming a Student Research Partner
Scope Your Project
Identify the business challenge, objectives, and datasets
Prepare and Share Data
Agree to a process around secure data sharing
Launch Your Project
Meet your student team and discuss project objectives and expectations
Meet Regularly
Attend weekly meetings with your student team and Wharton mentor
Participate in the Summit
Experience student presentations with insights, models, and solutions
Evaluate Impact
Discuss project recommendations and business implications with the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative
Fall 2026 AI & Analytics Accelerator Projects
Building Context for AI Agents
Project Details
Accenture aims to identify and compare effective approaches for capturing tacit, contextual knowledge embedded in organizational work processes, and evaluate whether the captured context is sufficient to support effective AI agent deployment.
Agentic Products for Travel
Project Details
Expedia Group is seeking to develop a multimodal evaluator agent for travel-focused agentic products. They will assess the quality, accuracy, relevance, and presentation of both image and text outputs.
Leveraging Member Data
Project Details
Frieda Partners will work with a student team on a data initiative involving a founding cohort of the country's most exclusive private clubs. For the first time, these clubs are opening years of member behavioral data to outside researchers, offering access to closed populations with minimal churn and clearly observable outcomes.
Science-Based Reduction in Impaired Driving
Project Details
Heineken is developing a science-based approach to reducing drinking and driving through targeted behavioral interventions. They also seek to design and evaluate interventions to identify strategies with the greatest potential for impact.
Evaluating Investments in Enterprise AI
Project Details
RxSense looks to develop a forecasting model to determine the optimal investment in enterprise AI tools. They will use trial data to identify an approach that minimizes inefficiency while maximizing adoption and ROI.
AI-Driven Decision Support Framework
Project Details
Spencer will develop an AI-driven decision-support framework that uses retail store t-shirt data to connect planogram design to measurable business outcomes. The team aims to quantify the relationship between space allocation, planogram design, and business performance, with all measures evaluated against t-shirt sales, productivity, and conversion metrics.
Our Partners on the Impact of the Accelerator
Current & Previous Partners
Questions? Contact Us
