Across the academic spectrum and around the state, education leaders are rolling out initiatives to prepare students for a world where the pace of change is accelerating rapidly. That will demand more flexibility, sounder judgment, and greater entrepreneurial energy from today’s graduates. It will also challenge academic and government leaders to ensure that more of those graduates build careers and companies in the Boston area and Massachusetts.
“The superpower has always been the university system,” says Aman Narang, CEO of restaurant-tech company Toast and an MIT alum. “The best thing Boston can do is keep these people around.”
For its part, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working to drive artificial intelligence forward in sectors where the region is strongest, from biotechnology and robotics to defense and clean energy. It’s also trying to broaden entrepreneurship through a “dorm-to-startup” push, creating a pipeline of support services — from hack-a-thons to venture funding — to help students to start companies between classes.
“We’re in the race, and we can dominate in some areas,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, provost at MIT, who is leading several of its new initiatives.
Trade schools are also stepping up. Franklin Cummings Tech, for example, is hosting “skills showcases” at its new Roxbury campus, inviting Boston-area employers seeking tech-savvy students who can operate high-tech machinery.
“Front-line hiring managers, CEOs, industry leaders, they get a sense of what our students know,” says Aisha Francis, the school’s president. “And we give students a chance to show their skills.”
Colleges and universities across the state are ramping up training and collaborations with employers in a range of fields as companies adapt operations and business models to artificial intelligence. Some schools in Massachusetts, including MIT, are carving out a specialty in applied AI — sometimes called “AI+X” — deploying the technology to help businesses, hospitals, and research institutions to supercharge productivity, innovation, and scientific breakthroughs.
But too few leading artificial intelligence companies are based in the Boston area, says Boston venture capitalist Jeff Bussgang, who teaches a Harvard Business School course on launching technology ventures. The region’s universities still act as talent magnets and launchpads for entrepreneurs, Bussgang says, but too many of the brightest students launch companies in other states.
“Let’s get back in the arena,” Bussgang says. “Let’s fight for the talent, not sit back on our laurels.”
One local company fighting for talent — and winning — is Blitzy, a Cambridge startup that raised $200 million in May to develop AI apps that help businesses revamp old software programs and write new ones.
Brian Elliott, the founder of Blitzy (which is backed by Bussgang’s Flybridge Capital Partners), says he finds it easier to recruit talented graduates of local colleges and universities for his 80-person company without having to hire in the shadow of Silicon Valley giants such as Google, ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and advanced chipmaker Nvidia.
Blitzy’s pitch, in part, is to offer people a chance to build careers with a growing company rather than jump from one California goliath to another.
“We think there’s a competitive advantage to being one of the most interesting companies to work for here versus trying to compete with the headquarters of Nvidia, the headquarters of Google,” says Elliott. “There are so many brilliant engineers and [commercial talent] here in Boston that we can attract. That’s allowed us to have a very loyal employee base.”
The innovations fueled by local universities aren’t limited to AI. Coming out of the MIT lab of scientist and engineer Yet-Ming Chiang, for example, are new products that are allowing batteries to store more electricity over longer periods, creating more opportunities for wind, solar, and other clean energy sources.
Students at Chiang’s lab and other MIT research centers are also working on innovations in microchips, critical minerals, fusion technology, and defense tech. All are examples of “tough tech” projects combining science and engineering, which Chiang says “are in the sweet spot of the Boston ecosystem.”
At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, meanwhile, student researchers are recycling batteries and transforming bamboo and other non-food plants into fuel. The school is tailoring its research, along with its undergraduate and master’s programs, to align with the needs of Central Massachusetts industries such as data storage, medical gear, and biomanufacturing.
Grace Wang, WPI president, says the state’s companies and research universities are creating a lane in Massachusetts for using AI to make robots, drug development, manufacturing, and supply chains more efficient.
But that can only work, she says, if colleges and universities instill the broad knowledge, curiosity, flexibility, and open-mindedness students will need to thrive in a fast-changing technological world.
“We educate our students purposely on the human skills,” Wang says, “the skills to work in a team, communicate effectively, critical thinking, dealing with the pace, ambiguity, and complexity of this world.”
Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com.
