Lead the Next Breakthrough by Shaping the Future of NLP at UC Santa Cruz
As a leader in the field, you understand that the distance between a “moonshot” idea and a production-ready model is often a matter of focused resources. The UCSC NLP MS Capstone Program offers a unique opportunity to bridge that gap. We invite you to step into a mentorship role that functions less like a classroom and more like an R&D incubator.
Why Partner with UCSC Baskin Engineering?
Expand Your R&D Horizon
Principal Scientists often have a backlog of high-risk, high-reward projects that are too speculative for immediate corporate resources. By proposing a Capstone project, you gain an “extended R&D arm” of talented Master’s students. You direct the vision; they provide the dedicated technical execution. It is the ideal environment to test “what if” scenarios in NLP, from LLM optimization to niche semantic reasoning.
A 15-Week Deep-Dive Talent Evaluation
Traditional recruiting offers only a snapshot of a candidate’s ability. As a mentor, you spend May through December (with an optional break for the Summer Quarter) observing how students navigate real-world technical debt, team dynamics, and complex problem-solving. It is the most effective way to identify and secure the next generation of principal-level talent for your organization before they even hit the open market.
Influence the Academic Standard
Your mentorship ensures that the next wave of NLP practitioners is trained on the problems that actually matter to industry. You join an elite circle of mentors from organizations like Google, Meta, Adobe, Cisco, and Intel, helping to define the intersection of academic rigor and industrial application.
Join Us
We are seeking sophisticated project proposals from industry, academia, and non-profit sectors. Whether your focus is a proprietary organizational challenge or a contribution to the broader NLP community, we provide the platform.
- Timeline: Mentors provide strategic guidance for approximately 15 weeks (spanning May, and September to December).
- The Outcome: The cycle culminates in a high-profile public workshop where teams showcase their results to the Silicon Valley tech community.
- Process: Submit your project proposal for review; if selected, you will be matched with a team specifically curated for your project’s technical requirements.
Ready to mentor the minds that will build the next generation of conversational AI and linguistic models? We invite you to discuss your project vision with us.
Start the Conversation by contacting Beth Ann Hockey (bahockey@ucsc.edu), Academic Capstone Coordinator, to learn more about shaping your legacy through the UCSC NLP MS program.
