Meet Ankit (Patrick) Verma, a student in the computer science master's program who spent the summer gaining hands-on experience in Applied AI and Analytics at SharkNinja. SharkNinja is a leading global consumer technology company behind popular small home appliances across the Shark and Ninja lines. Headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts, they focus on solving everyday household challenges through fast-paced product innovation and smart technology.
Q: What did your experiential learning experience look like?
A: “During my summer experiential learning opportunity in Applied AI and Analytics at SharkNinja, a major highlight was participating in the SharkNinja Jailbreak EDU AI Hackathon,” Verma said.
As part of the hackathon, Verma collaborated with a team and a SharkNinja mentor to develop an AI-powered tool designed to analyze public market signals, including consumer trends, social data and patent activity.
“We built a prototype that successfully identified and ranked promising product categories, summarizing the supporting signals and explaining the strategic fit behind each recommendation,” he said.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you encountered, and how did you overcome it?
A: “One of the biggest challenges was working on open-ended problems where there was not always a clearly defined technical solution from the start,” Verma said.
The experience required him to understand the underlying business need, evaluate different approaches and turn ideas into solutions that could work reliably in a production environment. “I learned to break large problems into smaller experiments, validate assumptions quickly and continuously incorporate feedback from engineers and business stakeholders,” he said.
The Jailbreak Hackathon reinforced this approach, as his team worked under a tight timeline to turn an idea into a working solution.
Q: What skills did you develop or strengthen through this experience?
A: Verma strengthened his ability to build AI and software systems beyond the prototype stage, gaining experience across retrieval-augmented generation, cloud infrastructure, knowledge graphs, automated testing and data pipelines.
“I also developed stronger communication and collaboration skills by working with people across engineering, analytics, product and business teams,” he said.
Most importantly, the experience changed how he thinks about AI systems. “I learned to think about AI as one component of a larger system designed to solve meaningful problems,” Verma said.
Q: How did this experience shape or influence your academic or career goals?
A: “My experience at SharkNinja made me more interested in the intersection of machine learning, large-scale systems and product development,” Verma said.
Although he entered Brown’s computer science master's program with a strong interest in AI and machine learning, the internship helped him discover that he especially enjoys “taking intelligent systems from experimentation to reliable, real-world deployment.”
The experience has motivated him to deepen his understanding of machine learning systems, infrastructure and system design through his remaining coursework at Brown.
Looking ahead, Verma hopes to pursue applied AI or machine learning engineering roles where he can combine technical depth with building products that create measurable impact.
Q: How did you find and secure this opportunity?
A: Verma found his internship through a university career resource. Handshake is a great place to look for opportunities.
Q: What has been the most valuable part of your experience so far?
A: For Verma, the experience has been valuable both professionally and academically. “The most valuable part of my experience was building a professional network and connecting with mentors in my field,” he said.
He also found the opportunity helped him “shift my career direction by discovering new interests I hadn't considered before the real-world impact of the theories and concepts I learned in my master's program.”