Broaden your analytics skillset through a semester-long experiential learning project and work with actual companies using real-world datasets
Benefits
Fall 2025 AI & Analytics Accelerator – Important Dates
Students must be able to commit a minimum of 10 hours a week for 8 weeks.
Selected students will have the opportunity to work directly with leading companies to solve real business challenges using the latest advances in machine learning and AI.
Fall 2025 AI & Analytics Accelerator Projects
Global Professional Services Company
The goal of this project is to track how agentic AI adoption is reshaping workforce demand, job roles, and skill requirements across industries.
Healthcare and Pharmacy Technology Company
This project focuses on forecasting pharmaceutical utilization and pricing to help clients anticipate the impact of new drug launches, generic switches, and broader drug category shifts.
Healthcare Technology Company
Project Red
This project will develop a data-driven model to recommend optimal base rates for new facilities, leveraging regional benchmarks, historical shift fill rates, and specialty-specific demand patterns.
Project Blue
This project is focused on developing intelligent pricing tools that enhance shift fulfillment and optimize marketplace efficiency.
International Retailer
This project engages student teams to apply data science and machine learning techniques to a real-world e-commerce challenge: predicting and reducing customer churn in the online shopping experience.
Veterinary School and Hospital
The goal of this is to identify patterns in client satisfaction, loyalty, and giving potential to inform smarter segmentation, more timely and tailored solicitations, and targeted marketing strategies.
How it Works
Who Is Eligible?
Penn and Wharton undergraduate and graduate students who show a demonstrated interest in analytics and possess relevant skills ranging from project management, to client relations, to technical expertise. Technical skills are not required but are a plus.
Apply
Submit your application through a highly competitive selection process to become a Wharton Analytics Fellow and get assigned to a company based on your skillset and their needs.
Launch
Kick off the project, meet with your assigned company, and discuss their real-world business challenge.
Analyze
Working closely with a Wharton mentor, analyze the dataset using programming languages and tools of your choice (i.e., Python, SQL) and create a statistical model that helps to solve the business challenge.
Present
Share your findings and recommendations with your company at the AI & Analytics Accelerator Summit.
Role Requirements
Business Lead
Business Leads are responsible for leading and managing the project team, coordinating with clients, and managing the finer details of the engagement. They are usually MBAs or upperclassmen and often have extensive work and leadership experience in business and consulting.
Technical Lead
Technical Leads are data science experts with high-level programming skills who are responsible for the technical aspects of the projects. They build the most complex models and mentor analysts throughout the project. Technical Leads are usually PhD or MSE students with extensive industry experience.
Senior Analyst
Senior Analysts are top undergraduates with advanced skills in programming, statistics, and modeling. They usually have high-level coursework in the CIS and STAT departments under their belt in addition to significant internship and project experience.
Junior Analyst
Junior Analysts typically have intermediate data science skills at roughly the level of STAT 102, STAT 477, and/or WUDAC’s Analytics 101 and 201 courses. They are notable for their willingness to learn and work hard, and many of them progress into leadership roles within WAF in later semesters.
“Having the opportunity to work with real datasets, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of many of the statistical concepts I had learned in my coursework. After working on three AI & Analytics Accelerators, I feel confident in my ability to tackle a real-world, unstructured, data science problem.”
– Ashley Clarke, W’23
AI & Analytics Accelerator Case Studies
Related Articles
Spring 2024 Student Spotlights
Last spring, the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative hosted its 12th AI & Analytics Accelerator, an experiential learning opportunity which pairs teams of students from across the University of Pennsylvania with participating companies.
Peggy Pranschke from Petco worked with teams of Wharton and Penn students to leverage machine learning and data analytics to help develop novel solutions for supplementing email marketing campaigns for her company.
Current & Previous Partners
