Dates
Winter session: January 6 – 10, 2025
Summer session: May 27 – June 6, 2025
Location
Philadelphia, USA
Application Deadlines
For information regarding our submission deadlines, please visit our application information page.
Program Fees
Winter program (one week):
- $3,999 (includes housing and meals)
Summer program (two weeks):
- $7,599 (includes housing and meals)
Contact
For more information, please contact: AcademyPrograms@wharton.upenn.edu
Overview
Learn to harness the power of AI to drive business transformation with Wharton Academy’s AI for Business program. AI technologies have gained significant traction in recent years across various job roles, including finance, HR, policy, marketing, and strategy. As the capabilities of AI technologies continue to evolve, modern “digital leaders” must master the use of technology and enhance their understanding of its limitations, its competitive implications, and potential social impact in order to address complex industry challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. This program, led by Wharton instructors with extensive experience in AI research and application, provides the tools and insights necessary to understand the managerial tradeoffs around AI systems and the capabilities of the latest tools for automating decision-making.
What You’ll Learn:
- AI in Business Contexts: Explore cutting-edge AI technologies and their applications across business functions. Understand AI’s potential to revolutionize business processes and facilitate decision-making.
- Implementation Techniques and Challenges: Participate in hands-on labs to learn how AI is integrated into business operations. Utilize both “no-code” tools and introductory coding platforms to build a solid understanding of machine learning concepts and essential tradeoffs using algorithms.
- Market and Regulatory Considerations: Critically evaluate the legal and regulatory implications of AI adoption across sectors, and discuss the challenges of balancing innovation with responsibility. These discussions include the potential impact of AI on the future of work and jobs, as well as the importance of data privacy, markets for chips and data, and intellectual property rights for AI-generated outputs.
Discover how AI and large language models can be powerful tools for fostering business growth, improving operational efficiency, and enhancing competitive advantage. This program will prepare you to lead in an evolving technological landscape.
Details
Academic classes for AI for Business are held Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with evenings free (except for group events).
A typical day looks like:
- 7:00-9:00 – Breakfast
- 9:00-12:00- Topics Lecture or Guest Speaker (with break)
- 12:00-1:00- Lunch
- 1:00-4:00- Group Work and Debrief (with break)
- 4:00-5:00 – Office Hours
You can expect to:
- Earn a Wharton Academy badge through our one-week program or a Wharton Academy certificate by completing our two-week program
- Join visiting undergraduates from around the world to build a network of emerging business professionals
- Engage in a 35-hour in-person learning program in Wharton classrooms
- Enjoy housing & meals at the University of Pennsylvania
Eligibility
Qualifications for Participation
- Current Undergraduate student or recent college graduate
- Highest English proficiency – TOEFL 100+ IELTS-Band 7 or higher. If TOEFL or IELTS scores are unavailable, applicants may submit Duolingo, PSAT, SAT, or ACT scores as an alternate. The minimum Duolingo score required is 130.
- Strong quantitative skills
Admission
Admission to the Wharton Academy AI for Business Program is selective. Selections are based on a record of academic excellence and a genuine interest in developing knowledge of AI to foster business growth and improve operational efficiency.
Please note that participation does not guarantee admission into Penn.
Instructional Team
Instructor: Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe
Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe is an Associate Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the economics of technology and labor. Recent research projects focus on 1) understanding how firms compete for software developers, 2) how software engineers choose technologies in which to specialize, and 3) how AI is transforming HR management.
Much of this research has uses Internet-scale data sources to measure labor market activity at novel levels of granularity. His published papers have analyzed data from online job sites and other labor market intermediaries that generate databases of fine-grained information on workers’ skills and career paths or on employers’ job requirements. He is a co-author of “The Talent Equation: Big Data Lessons for Navigating the Skills Gap and Building a Competitive Workforce,” published by McGraw Hill in 2013.
His research has been published or is forthcoming in a number of academic journals including Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, The Review of Financial Studies, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Communications of the ACM, and Information Economics and Policy and it has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His research has also won a number of awards, including the Best Published Paper in Information Systems Research and two papers have been nominees for the Best Published IS Paper in Management Science. He currently serves on the editorial board of Management Science and in the past, has served on the editorial board of Information Systems Research.
Professor Tambe received his S.B. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Managerial Science and Applied Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.