Bridging the AI Gap
Interdisciplinary Summer Bridges Program challenges students to collaborate on responsible AI startups and address real-world problems
Colby College’s Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in partnership with the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship, and the ARIA Institute completed the inaugural Interdisciplinary Summer Bridges Program, an eight-week initiative that trains students to develop AI ventures that address real-world problems.
The program brought together 32 students representing 23 majors and six institutions: Colby College, Brown University, the Max Planck Institute in Germany, the University of New Mexico, Connecticut College and Thomas College. Participants ranged from first-year undergraduates to doctoral candidates.
The program ran in two four-week sessions. In the first, students studied AI fundamentals, including machine learning, neural networks and large language models, through lectures and hands-on workshops led by Colby faculty in computer science and statistics. In the second, students formed collaborative teams, with doctoral candidates from Brown and Max Planck mentoring undergraduates as they developed original AI startup concepts. The program concluded with capstone pitches to an expert panel that included former IBM CIO Kathryn Guarini.
According to David Watts, director of the Davis Institute, the program sets itself apart by treating AI literacy as more than technical training, connecting students from diverse disciplines with experts in AI, ethics and real-world applications to tackle societal challenges.
Ethics was central to the curriculum. Guest speakers, including University of New Mexico professor Melanie Moses and Colby faculty members Veronica Romero and Isaac Lage, examined the risks of applying AI in sensitive fields such as mental and behavioral health care, where inaccuracies, bias and privacy concerns carry serious consequences.
Students received pay for their participation, making the program both an educational experience and a paid summer internship, an opportunity that is often difficult for early-career undergraduates to secure.
The program was made possible with support from the Davis family through the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, the National Science Foundation, Bank of America and the Bill and Joan Alfond Family Foundation.