Next up in our Summer Fellowship team highlight series is SAVKAR.AI.
The UConn College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Amit Savkar, graduate student David Nichols, and industry partner William Moschella are creating a predictive analytics platform for student retention in STEM fields, called SAVKAR.AI.
In the words of entrepreneurial lead David Nichols, “We have developed assessment, instruction, and predictive analytics tools which have greatly increased our students’ success in mathematics courses. Now we are building an online software platform so that we can bring that same success to mathematics programs in colleges and universities around the country.”
When asked why SAVKAR.AI decided to participate in the Summer Fellowship program, Nichols responded that, “increasingly, colleges and universities rely on educational technologies and the businesses that deliver those technologies. In order to elevate my educational software projects from my classrooms to the broader education tech ecosystem, I need to learn about business and entrepreneurship. The Summer Fellowship is my first step down that road. “
SAVKAR.AI entered Summer Fellowship with the intent to learn about business, and that goal has been achieved. Nichols states that the most important lesson he has learned thus far in the project is to always validate assumptions. By the end of the program, he hopes to learn how to think like an entrepreneur and to cultivate the skills that are required for to continue learning and gathering information about this and other business ventures.