Next cohort applications open

A PhD-led ML research lab for ambitious high school students.

Work 1:1 with a graduate researcher to build a serious machine learning project, including a workshop-style paper, codebase, poster, and, for strong projects, an external submission to a relevant ML workshop, student journal, or preprint server.

Our program is designed for students who want to go beyond online courses and competitions. Students work through the full research process: reading papers, defining a research question, running experiments, writing a technical paper, and presenting their work clearly.

Most students take online AI courses. Our students build original research artifacts.

DRAFT v0.3· 0 wordsworkshop paper

Figure 2 — F1 scores across models

GPT
Mist
L3
Base
Deliverables

What students build

Every student works toward a polished research artifact. Depending on the project, this may include a 4–6 page workshop-style paper, reproducible codebase, poster, technical report, preprint, or external submission. We do not guarantee publication, but we help strong projects reach a submission-ready standard.

Paper

Hallucination Rates in AI Tutoring

Abstract — We evaluate three language models on 1,200 tutoring prompts, measuring factual consistency and response quality.

3. Experiments

Baselines include GPT-4o-mini, Llama-3-8B, and Mistral-7B…

Code
def run_experiment():
model = load_baseline()
return model.evaluate()
Results

Figure 2 — F1 by model

GPT
Mist
L3
Base

Best F1: 0.82 — Llama-3-8B outperforms baseline by 12.4%

Workshop-style ML paper

4–6 page technical write-up with methods, experiments, and analysis.

GitHub codebase

Reproducible code with documented experiments and results.

Research poster

Visual summary of your research question, methods, and findings.

Experiment results

Benchmarks, ablations, and evaluation across datasets.

Literature review

Structured survey of prior work and research context.

Preprint or external submission

Submission-ready manuscripts for workshops, journals, or arXiv.

Research Areas

Research tracks

Students select a track aligned with their interests and technical background. Each track includes structured mentorship toward a tractable, publishable research question.

LLM Evaluation & AI Safety

Students evaluate language models on reasoning, hallucination, bias, safety, robustness, or domain-specific tasks.

Example projects

  • Evaluating LLMs on high school science misconception detection
  • Measuring hallucination rates in AI tutoring responses
  • Comparing small open-source models on safety classification

AI for Education

Students build and evaluate tools for grading, tutoring, feedback, or learning analytics.

Example projects

  • Detecting math reasoning errors in student explanations
  • Evaluating LLM feedback quality on college essays
  • Building a dataset of student misconceptions

ML for Health & Biology

Students use public datasets to study biomedical prediction, medical imaging, genomics, or molecular ML.

Example projects

  • Predicting disease risk from tabular health data
  • Classifying medical images with deep learning
  • Benchmarking models for molecular property prediction

Computer Vision

Students work on image classification, detection, segmentation, generative models, or multimodal learning.

Example projects

  • Detecting urban features from satellite imagery
  • Benchmarking vision models on real-world distribution shifts
  • Classifying plant disease from image datasets

ML for Economics & Finance

Students apply machine learning to public datasets in economics, finance, housing, labor markets, and information quality.

Example projects

  • Predicting housing prices using public economic data
  • Detecting financial misinformation with LLMs
  • Modeling labor market trends using public datasets

AI for Climate & Social Good

Students use ML to study climate, public policy, environmental risk, and social-impact problems.

Example projects

  • Predicting urban heat islands from satellite and census data
  • Classifying disaster-related social media posts
  • Forecasting air quality with public environmental data
Timeline

How the program works

A structured 14-week research process, from choosing a direction to a submission-ready paper.

Weeks 1–2

Get to know the student, choose a direction

Mentor and student align on interests, background, and a research direction.

Weeks 3–5

Read papers, learn background

Student builds the literature foundation and learns the technical background for the project.

Weeks 6–9

Build and run experiments

Student implements the approach, runs experiments, and iterates on results.

Weeks 10–12

Analyze results

Student evaluates findings, runs follow-ups, and sharpens the research story.

Weeks 13–14

Write the paper and prepare submission

Student writes the paper and prepares a submission-ready package.

Mentorship

Mentored by graduate researchers

PhD students, postdocs, and graduate researchers in machine learning and related fields — matched on project fit, not tutoring availability.

Mentor network includes

  • Stanford

  • CMU

  • Berkeley

01

Research interests

Aligned with a mentor’s active work, not a generic subject list.

02

Technical background

Matched to what you can already build and what you need to learn.

03

Project goals

Scoped toward a tractable question and a real research artifact.

Results

Outcomes students can leave with

Research paper or technical report

Reproducible codebase

Research poster

Final presentation/demo

Mentor feedback

Submission-ready manuscript

External submission support

Stronger college/research profile

Disclaimer: Publication and workshop acceptance depend on project quality, venue fit, and reviewer decisions. We help students produce the strongest possible submission, but external outcomes are not guaranteed.

Admissions

Who should apply

This program is for motivated high school students who are curious about AI and machine learning, ready to commit several hours each week, and excited to work on a real research project — not just complete another course or competition.

Prior research or ML experience helps, but it is not required. What matters most is drive, follow-through, and a genuine interest in reading, experimenting, and taking ownership of your work.

Tuition

Pricing & admissions

Tuition varies by program length, mentor fit, and project scope. Families receive pricing after the consultation.

Apply for a consultation
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

No. We help students produce submission-ready work and support strong projects through external submissions, but acceptances depend on venue fit, project quality, and reviewer decisions.

Some coding experience is helpful. We match students to projects based on their current level, technical background, and goals.

Mentors are PhD students, postdocs, and graduate researchers in machine learning and related fields.

A paper or technical report, codebase, poster, and final presentation. Strong projects may also be submitted externally.

The program runs 14 weeks.

Students are screened for motivation, technical readiness, and project fit.

Contact

Contact us

Questions about the program, admissions, or scheduling a parent/student consultation? Send us a message and we'll follow up.

Apply

Apply for the next cohort

Tell us about your background, interests, and goals through our formal application. It usually takes about 10–15 minutes.

Completing the application does not guarantee admission or a specific mentor match. Strong applicants may be invited to a brief follow-up conversation.

Begin Application