Break Through Tech AI - MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Break Through Tech AI helps students gain the skills they need to get jobs in the fastest-growing areas of tech: data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Hosted by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in collaboration with Break Through Tech — a national initiative launched by Cornell Tech in 2016 — Break Through Tech AI provides skills-based training, industry-relevant portfolios, and mentoring to qualified students in the Greater Boston area.

The free, 18-month program will also provide each student with a stipend for participation to lower the barrier for those typically unable to engage in an unpaid, extra-curricular educational opportunity.

Program Details

Skills-based curriculum

Break Through Tech AI kicks off in the summer at MIT with an eight-week, skills-based online course and in-person lab experience that teaches industry-relevant tools to build real-world AI solutions. Students will learn how to analyze data sets and use several common machine learning libraries to build, train, and implement their own ML models in a business context.

Industry projects

Following the summer course, students will be matched with machine-learning challenge projects for which they will convene monthly at MIT in person and work in teams to build solutions and collaborate with an industry advisor or mentor throughout the academic year, resulting in a portfolio of resume-quality work.

Mentoring and career coaching

Participants will also be paired with young professionals in the field to help build their network, prepare their portfolio, practice for interviews, and cultivate workplace skills.

The application for the 2025-2026 program is now closed.

For more information about the program, contact breakthroughtechai@mit.edu.