Chicago LEAD
Before the program became Chicago LEAD, it was covered as the AI Student Consulting Program: a partnership among 1871, Northwestern University, and Northeastern Illinois University focused on helping students take artificial intelligence and computer science from the classroom into real company work.
In a 2022 interview with Paperspace, Alex Castrounis of 1871 described a model built around mixed-university student teams, technical experts, and companies with actual problems to solve. The teams worked in a service-provider and client relationship rather than a traditional internship, giving students practice in collaboration, communication, and delivery as well as model development.
The through line
The details have evolved, but the central idea is familiar: students learn by working together on a problem that matters to someone outside the classroom. Teams received a company problem statement, relevant context and resources, then researched and developed a possible solution over the course of the program.
The interview also captures an early commitment to giving students room to build. 1871 provided access to Paperspace Gradient so teams could spend less time configuring infrastructure and more time exploring data, prototyping, and testing machine learning approaches.