SCHULICH MASTER OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONSULTING PROJECT (AICP)
7 Months. Real Clients. Real Systems. Real Impact.
The Artificial Intelligence Consulting Project (AICP) is the capstone integrative course of the Master of Artificial Intelligence (MMAI) program. It is an intensive, two-term consulting engagement in which small teams of top graduate artificial intelligence students partner with organizations to tackle real, high-value business problems using analytics and AI.
Under the guidance of experienced faculty advisors, AICP teams work as AI consultants moving from problem framing and data understanding through system development, evaluation, and executive-level recommendations.
From architectural design to model evaluation and system validation, students from Canada’s top business school deliver robust AI proof-of-concepts and technical roadmaps, providing organizations with decision-ready technical insights that prove feasibility and drive meaningful business results.
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is a structured, outcomes-driven AI engagement designed to support real outcomes.
The project runs seven months
September - March
The Schulich School of Business is rated #1 in Canada by TheEconomist
There is no fee charged for participating organizations
AICP Timeline
Month Phase
Phase 1
September
October
November
Problem Framing & Identification
Phase 2
Data Understanding & Readiness
Phase 3
AI System & Model Design
December / January
February
March
Phase 4
Model Development & Iteration
Phase 5
Validation, Explainability & Insights
Phase 6
Deployment Readiness & Reflection
Key Activities
Students work with client stakeholders to define the business problem, assess where AI can add value, understand organizational constraints, and clarify success criteria. This is where vision meets feasibility.
Students assess data and readiness to ensure suitability for AI engineering and system design. This validation ensures that systems are built on a foundation that is reliable, ethical, and aligned with the intended use case.
Teams translate business goals into technical requirements architecting AI system designs, selecting learning paradigms, and defining evaluation frameworks to ensure the POC is robust, scalable, and tied to outcomes.
Design to development students bring their architectural blueprints to life through hands-on AI engineering, building the functional proof- of-concept, while navigating the tradeoffs between performance, scalability, and risk.
Teams pressure-test the system for robustness and performance to deliver an implementation roadmap. This ensures model outputs translate into actionable insights and a clear path for deployment and scaling.
Final executive presentations, documentation, and deployment and implementation roadmaps bring the engagement full circle, alongside reflection on ethics, governance, and professional responsibility in AI.
The course provides students with real skills:
• Translating organizational challenges into clearly defined, AI-driven project scopes.
• Working with real-world data to prepare, engineer, and analyze complex datasets for AI applications.
• Applying appropriate AI and data science methods, tools, and advanced analytical techniques.
• Extracting actionable insights and measurable business value through AI-enabled analytics and data science.
• Managing AI projects effectively across timelines, deliverables, and stakeholders.
• Communicating findings and models through professional written reports and executive-level presentations.
The course mirrors how AI actually works in the real world:
• Ill-defined problems
• Model risk and explainability challenges
• Stakeholder trust and adoption
• Responsible, decision-driven deployment
Graduates don’t just leave knowing how to build models they leave with the confidence and judgment to design, validate, and apply AI responsibly in real organizations.
Why partner with the Schulich MMAI AICP?
Get a Fresh, Independent AI Perspective
AICP teams bring an AI-driven lens to your organization’s challenges often developing models, identifying risks, and creating opportunities. You gain access to emerging AI talent applying the latest tools, methods, and thinking.
Turn Data and AI into Deployment-Ready Systems
Projects focus on actionable systems, not just academic theory. Deliverables are designed to support real business performance, trade-offs, and decisions.
Low-Risk, High-Value Collaboration
The AICP is an academic partnership allowing organizations to explore meaningful AI use cases with minimal financial commitment while contributing to talent development.
Help Shape the Next Generation of AI Leaders
Organizations play an active role in mentoring and developing future artificial intelligence professionals, while building early relationships with top graduate talent.
A Partnership Built on Collaboration
“Being part of the AICP has been about more than learning new concepts; it is about putting them to work in real-world scenarios.
I’ve developed the skill to understand data and use it to solve problems and generate new ideas.
The AICP’s value has been in the confidence it has provided me with to apply my gained knowledge, shaping me to become a leader ready to transform industries with insight and impact.”
Dhari Gandhi (MMAI ’24)
Associate Project Manager for Applied AI Projects, Vector Institute
Successful AICP projects are partnerships. Clients provide business context, data access, and feedback; students bring AI expertise, curiosity, and structured problem-solving; faculty ensure rigor, scope alignment, and learning outcomes. Students and faculty are legally bound by confidentiality agreements.
What we ask of our AICP partners
Bring a meaningful AI business problem where data, analytics, and AI can help inform decisions, improve performance, or unlock new opportunities.
Identify a project champion to provide organizational context, coordinate input, and support the team on the engagement.
Enable access to datasets and supporting information, in line with privacy, security, and confidentiality requirements.
Offer feedback to help students interpret results and focus on what matters most to your organization.
Collaborate on scope and direction to refine objectives as data realities and AI opportunities emerge.
Embrace the partnership as a learning-focused experience.
The AICP helps us to plan our pilots and scout for the talents that can help us to drive the pilots to production. It also allows us to navigate what's possible while we focus on our core development.
Building a project is only the first step having the students to execute it is where we create real value.
The academic partnership also connects us with bright minds from a diversified background, so it can help us to continue to innovate and stay competitive in the fast-moving AI and analytics space.
Anferny
Chen Chief Executive Officer, DotsLive
The Future is Bright for Innovation
Industry and AICP examples
We have partnered with organizations across industries on an array of projects including machine learning, natural language processing, generative AI, and other data science and AI problems. The examples reflect a cross-section of the industries and projects completed in previous semesters:
Industries
Arts & Entertainment
Consulting
Financial
Services
Government
Healthcare
Projects
AI query and analysis of patient data
AI-driven planogram analysis in retail
GenAI systems for synthesizing research
Geospatial Analysis & NLP for Investments
Probability maintenance prediction
Become an AICP Project Partner
Manufacturing
Mining, Oil & Gas
Retail
Technology
Transportation
RAG approach to synthetic data generation
Regulatory compliance scanning
Robotic process automation
Sentiment analysis using visual intelligence
Service excellence with trusted AI
We are actively seeking organizations interested in partnering with the Schulich AICP for the upcoming semester(s). If your organization is interested in learning more, please contact us:
Hjalmar Turesson
Program Director, Master of Artificial Intelligence
