Innovators Lab Spring 2026 Program Kickoff

There is no shortage of talk about artificial intelligence: what it might replace, what it might disrupt, what it might get wrong. Far less attention is paid to a simpler, more practical question: who is being trained to build it responsibly, and for whom?

That question sits at the center of the newly launched Innovators Lab, a 10-week program created by us to give students the rare opportunity to design, develop, and launch industrial-grade applied AI projects.

The demand was telling. More than 100 students applied, and that level of interest suggests a quiet truth: young builders are not just chasing résumés or hype cycles. Many are looking for ways to apply technology to their communities in ways that feel grounded and human.

This quarter’s cohort includes just four students: Anshul Sinha, Ethan Chu, Faria Mostafa, and Gabriella Ramos. Their selection was about curiosity, persistence, and a willingness to engage with messy, real-world constraints.

Over the next ten weeks, these students will work alongside mentors and industry practitioners to design AI systems, stress-test them, and bring them to launch. They will confront the unglamorous parts of innovation: tradeoffs, scalability, usability, and failure. In other words, they will learn what it actually means to build something that lasts.

Programs like this do not promise overnight breakthroughs, and that is precisely the point. Progress, especially in technology, is rarely the result of sudden insight. It is the outcome of sustained effort, careful thinking, and communities that invest in people before products.