AI Summer School 2025

Registration is closed. We will have limited on-site availability. Please contact us for more information.

Join us for an immersive week-long summer school focused on the cutting-edge advancements and practical applications of deep learning and AI. This program is designed for enthusiasts and professionals with a strong foundation in programming, specifically those familiar with Python and modern development environments. Each day is structured to provide a comprehensive blend of theoretical foundations, practical insights, and hands-on experiences, utilizing Python, PyTorch, and VSCode.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn from leading experts, engage in thought-provoking discussions, and explore the latest trends and challenges in the field. The program kicks off with a 鈥淒eep Learning Jump Start,鈥� introducing the basics of neural networks and essential optimization techniques. As the week progresses, participants will delve into practical issues with real-world data, including data augmentation, diagnostics, and troubleshooting. Advanced models like transformers and large language models will be explored in depth, along with a dedicated day to visual AI, covering diffusion models and advanced generative techniques. We conclude with critical aspects of AI ethics, including privacy, fairness, transparency, and model robustness. This summer school promises a rich learning experience, combining theoretical knowledge with practical applications, ensuring participants are well-equipped to tackle contemporary challenges in AI.

New this year, we鈥檙e introducing an AI Workshop Track that runs in parallel with the main lecture series, turning Stevenson Hall into a studio for discovery. Guided by experienced AI coaches鈥攕cholars who build and deploy deep-learning systems every day鈥攖hese sessions replace slides with keyboards, pairing brief concept primers with coding labs, model-building sprints, and code reviews. You鈥檒l iterate through mini-projects that sharpen core skills like data wrangling in pandas, custom layer design in PyTorch, prompt engineering for LLMs, and deployment tips for VSCode + Docker, all while receiving real-time feedback tailored to your current level. Whether you鈥檙e eager to solidify fundamentals or push into advanced experimentation, the AI Workshop Track provides a collaborative sandbox where ideas migrate from whiteboard to working prototype before day鈥檚 end鈥攅nsuring you leave not just inspired, but armed with reproducible notebooks and a toolkit you can drop directly into your own research or product pipeline.

What: AI Summer School / 2025

Where: Stevenson Hall on 91吃瓜网鈥檚 Campus.听

Main Hall: Stevenson 4309
AI Workshop Track: Stevenson 4327

When: August 11-14, 2025 / 9 am 鈥� 4:30 pm听

Coffee & Food: Of course!听

On Site Logistics

For a full campus map, please see: /map/

Campus Locations

Detailed View of Room Locations

Keynotes

From Classroom to Boardroom: How Students Delivered $72M in Business Value with AI

Francois Peltier
Transformation Lead, Nissan Motor Company

This keynote showcases the transformative outcomes of an innovative collaboration between 91吃瓜网鈥檚 Data Science Institute and Nissan North America. Over the course of 12 weeks, eight interdisciplinary student teams tackled real-world business challenges鈥攔anging from cost optimization and predictive sourcing to EV charging behavior and app analytics. By leveraging AI, machine learning, and agile methodologies, the teams delivered scalable solutions with a combined estimated value of $72 million. This session highlights the power of academic-industry partnerships, the importance of future-proof data skills, and the impact of empowering emerging talent to drive innovation at scale.听

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Brief Biography:听听

Francois Peltier听is a transformation leader with over 20 years of global experience in automotive, finance, and mobility. As former Director of Open Innovation for the Renault-Nissan Alliance in Silicon Valley, he helped launch a $400M venture fund, forged strategic partnerships with tech leaders like VISA, and led pioneering initiatives in AI, payments, and smart mobility. At Nissan, he drives enterprise-wide innovation鈥攍eading AI-powered programs, data governance, and strategic planning that have delivered over $100M in value. His work spans digital customer experience, SaaS ecosystems, and corporate finance. A seasoned speaker and educator, Francois has presented at global forums including the World Economic Forum and teaches at 91吃瓜网 DSI and collaborated with several prestigious universities such as UC Berkeley and Stanford. Fluent in multiple languages and passionate about technology and mobility, he brings strategic insight and operational excellence to every stage.听

AI in Practice: Behavioral Design and Feedback from the Drive-Thru Frontier

Will Croushorn, MBA
AI Product Manager, The Wendy鈥檚 Company

Most artificial intelligence systems are trained in controlled environments. Ours was deployed in a drive-thru. Over the past two years, FreshAi, a generative AI platform developed for one of the most operationally demanding and behaviorally complex domains in the world, has powered more than 15 million customer interactions across hundreds of restaurants. Rather than functioning in simulated conditions, it operates in real-world settings shaped by environmental noise, overlapping speech, evolving expectations, and live operational pressure. In this keynote, product leader Will Croushorn shares lessons from building and scaling FreshAi at the enterprise level. What began as a conversational interface quickly became a source of continuous learning, surfacing behavioral signals, exposing design gaps, and creating new forms of organizational insight. These signals, once dismissed as background noise, are now informing how Wendy鈥檚 understands its customers, trains its teams, and shapes future experiences. This is not simply a story about fast food or automation. It is a case study in how real-world AI can reveal unexpected patterns, foster trust through interaction, and expand accessibility through thoughtful design. The drive-thru has become an unlikely proving ground for applied intelligence at scale. Whether you are developing foundational models, designing human-centered interfaces, or deploying AI across enterprise environments, the lessons from FreshAi offer a glimpse into the future of intelligence that is context-aware, adaptive, and built to serve people in the moments that matter most.

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Brief Biography:

Will Croushorn is the co-creator of FreshAi, Wendy鈥檚 generative AI drive-thru platform now serving over 100,000 customers a day across hundreds of locations鈥攚ith more than 15 million orders to date and expansion to 600+ sites by the end of 2025. As Product Manager, he leads development at the intersection of machine intelligence, crew experience, and behavioral design, helping turn FreshAi into one of the first large-scale, real-world deployments of customer-facing AI. His work has been featured by Fast Company, Forbes, and NBC Nightly News, and was named one of Fast Company鈥檚鈥淣ext Big Things in Tech.鈥� Beyond voice, Will is exploring embodied AI through computer vision and projection-based interfaces, focused on how intelligent systems earn trust and adapt in the messy, high-stakes world of physical spaces.

Meet the Speakers

Meet the Coaches

Program at a Glance

TIME	Monday听 August 11听	Tuesday August 12	Wednesday August 13	Thursday August 14
8:30 am	Registration and Breakfast
9:00 am	Opening Remarks	Transformers from 0 to 60 鈥� Jesse Spencer-Smith 听	Keynote: Wendy鈥檚 Fresh AI, Will Croushorn, AI Product Leader. AI in Practice: Behavioral Design and Feedback from the Drive-Thru Frontier 听	Open Research Day, Call to Action 鈥� Jeffrey Neul
9:30 am	Keynote: Francois Peltier Transformation Lead, Nissan Motor Company From Classroom to Boardroom: How Students Delivered $72M in Business Value with AI Introduction & QA Chair: Dr. Jesse Spencer-Smith			Beyond Accuracy: Likelihood, Uncertainty, and Statistical Thinking in AI -听Bobby Bodenheimer
10:00 am		Vibe Coding for Scientists 听鈥� Jesse Spencer-Smith 听	**A Crash Course on Optimal Transport and Wasserstein Distances听鈥� Soheil Kolouri听**	Human Tumor Atlasing Data at Scale: A Foundation for AI-driven Precision Medicine -听Ken Lao
10:30 am	**AI Basic: From Linear Regression to Neural Network听鈥� Yuankai Huo** 听			**Domain Identification, Integration, and 3D Reconstruction Using Spatial Transcriptomics Data -听Mazie Zhou**
11:00 am		Diagnostics and Dashboard 鈥� Yehyun Suh听	The Shape of Data in Noise: Diffusion Models as a Programmable Prior听- Lianrui Zuo	**AI-guided precision surgery听鈥撎� Jie Ying Wu**
11:30 am				VMAC 鈥� Timothy Hohman
12:00 听pm听	*Lunch*
12:30 pm
1:00 pm	Neural Network Architectures 鈥撎� Daniel Moyer 听听	Timeseries Transformers: Basic Concepts and Applications in Neuroscience听-Chang Li	**ADVANCE, AI-enable EHR phenotyping听鈥� Wei-Qi Wei听** 听	**Segment Anything: Capabilities, Challenges, and Research Directions听鈥� Hao Li听** 听
1:30 pm				Phenotype Harmonization 鈥� Thomas Lasko
2:00 pm	Neural Network Architectures 鈥撎� Daniel Moyer 听听	*One Model, Reasoning Many Worlds: Quantizing the Multi-modal Revolution 鈥� Vishwesh Nath*	**Scaling Intelligence: How Foundation Models Are Redefining AI听鈥� Yihao Liu**	**Safeguarding privacy in AI for health: challenges and opportunities听鈥� Luca Bonomi**
2:30 pm				*AI and Archaeology: Vision Transformers for Feature Detection in Satellite Imagery at Continental Scale* 鈥� James听Zimmer-Dauphinee
3:00 pm	Introduction to Accre 鈥� Lindsey Fox &听Michael McAllister 听	Mentor Match听听	Alumni/IAP Panel 听	Algorithm Fairness 鈥� Melinda Aldrich听
3:30 pm				*Making the Ethically Right Choices in AI听鈥� Susannah Rose听*
4:00 pm	Networking	Networking	Networking	AI Governance 鈥� Mark Williams, Law

Program Details

AI Workshop Track

听	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
9:30	Single track	Single track	Single track	Optimal Transport for Practitioners: A Hands-On Tutorial
10:30	How To Use FLUX AI \| ComfyUI Tutorial	Deep learning methods or pipeline for spatial transcriptomics data	Pair Programming with CoPilot: Familiarization with GitHub and AI Tools	Optimal Transport for Practitioners: A Hands-On Tutorial
11	Resilient Distributed Machine Learning	Political Economy of AI		Spotify AI Recommendations
11:30	Resilient Distributed Machine Learning	Political Economy of AI		Spotify AI Recommendations
Noon	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH
1:00	Eyes on your model: Log everything and anything as you train	Single track	Hello AI World: Your First Steps with environments and IDEs	Art and creativity in an AI-driven world
1:30		Single track	ChatGPT prompting for a personalized professional website with GitHub pages	Sandbox Science: Testing Big AI Ideas on Tiny Datasets
2:00	Containerization for Science: Making Your Work Portable and Reproducible	Single track		Sandbox Science: Testing Big AI Ideas on Tiny Datasets
2:30		Single track		Single track

Academic Sponsors

VALIANT, , ACCRE, , DSI, ,听, , VINSE, VISE & are co-hosting the AI Summer School / 2025 Release.

2025 Industry Sponsors

Previous Years of AI Summer School

Click the links below to explore some of the previous iterations of this program.

2024 AI Summer School

Learning the Art of AI
2025 AI Summer School

Build the Future 鈥� in Bold Colors

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