CAAI Fellowship Program Introducing CAAI’s First AI Fellows Cohort

At the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence, we've been thinking a lot about what it means to build and sustain a community of leaders in AI at Booth. We’ve set out to create the conditions for students to engage hands-on with AI in a way that is tethered to real-world ongoings in the field. This Spring, we’ve launched the CAAI Fellows Program, a new initiative that supports Booth MBA students who want to take an active role in shaping the AI community on campus and beyond. 

Fellows become part of a dedicated cohort with opportunities to engage with alumni, shape AI programming, and craft written reflections on what it means to lead in unprecedented times and in an ever-evolving business environment. Our first cohort brings that vision to life–learn more about the inaugural AI Fellows cohort:

Miranda Burt has spent her career at the intersection of sports and business strategy, working with the Cleveland Guardians and moving into a strategy and analytics role with the Colorado Rockies. She is one of the people thinking seriously about what AI adoption actually looks like in industries—like sports—where the infrastructure is still in its early stages, but where the pressure to get it right is high. At Booth, she built an AI-powered tool to analyze video clips from basketball games, transforming her interest from theory into practice. As a fellow, she wants to create space for those kinds of honest, practical conversations: what works, what doesn't, and what it actually takes to implement AI when you're starting from a blank slate.  

Santiago Etchepare has a portfolio of experience creating that space for students to engage with leading issues and leaders in AI. As co-chair of the AI Club at Booth, he has moderated talks and panels, organized hackathons, and worked to connect students with people situated at the crux of in AI and finance, healthcare, and business strategy. As a fellow, he aims to facilitate more conversational panels with founders and investors, and create more meaningful touchpoints between students and the alumni network. He's motivated by access, making sure Booth students have real entry points into the AI landscape, not just exposure to it.

Keerthana Hogirala approaches AI from the healthcare side, with a career built around understanding how regulated, resource-constrained organizations actually get AI off the ground. She's worked across the healthcare AI ecosystem, and at Booth has focused on innovation and commercialization while contributing to an AI-native operating system for school-based healthcare. Her fellowship with CAAI will focus on practical programming around AI adoption, and she's particularly interested in building a stronger bridge between CAAI and the public-systems AI work being done at UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. 

Lorena Prates has been working with AI long enough to have seen what scaling it actually requires. At AB InBev, she led enterprise AI adoption across functions and ran large-scale employee upskilling programs. At Amazon, she led AI product development that drove significant operational improvements. Now at Booth, she's added coursework, mentorship, and legal research on AI governance and intellectual property to that foundation, while simultaneously founding Mida, an AI-native fintech startup. Her fellowship is oriented around the practitioner perspective: a cross-departmental AI prototyping workshop series and candid conversations about what it really takes to move AI from concept to scale.

Edward Chun started by building. He founded Dreampaint AI, a generative image model platform with users in multiple countries, and is the co-founder of DistroCC, an AI-powered document distribution safety tool for transactional law firms. At Booth, he's using the MiM curriculum to pair that technical foundation with business strategy and responsible deployment frameworks. As a fellow, he wants to connect students and alumni who are actively building AI products, and create programming, product teardowns, founder office hours, cross-school policy debates, that makes AI more practical and more interdisciplinary within the Booth community.

Together, this cohort reflects something we're proud of: the range of modalities through which AI can be harnessed, critically examined, and brought from ideation to full-fledged implementation phase. From sports analytics to fintech startups, each of these fellows brings a unique context, experience, and individual perspective that will further CAAI’s mission to develop real insight into how AI shapes business and society. We’re thrilled to support and equip this next generation of leaders to navigate an excitingly complex business place.

Applications for the next cycle will open next fall. If you're a Booth student with an idea for what you'd want to build or bring to the AI community here, we want to hear from you.