Persistent Taps Databricks, MSOE to Train Students in Production-Grade AI Systems

Persistent Systems has partnered with Databricks and Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) to help prepare students for enterprise-scale AI roles through a hands-on AI engineering initiative.

The collaboration centred on an AI Hackathon organised with the MSOE AI Club providing students with practical experience in building and managing AI systems for real-world business environments. The initiative aimed to bridge the gap between classroom learning and industry requirements as enterprises increasingly move from AI experiments to large-scale deployments.

Using the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, participants worked with tools such as Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Agent Bricks and Databricks Workflows. The program focused on areas including AI governance, scalable AI pipelines, workflow automation and production-grade AI architectures.

“The AI market is shifting from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide operationalisation, demanding engineers fluent in governed data, scalable platforms and production-grade execution,” Sameer Dixit, Corporate Vice President and Head of Data, AI and Integration, Persistent, said.

He added that the hackathon was designed to provide students with real-world platform experience and engineering discipline early in their careers while strengthening connections between academia and industry.

Persistent’s senior architects and project leaders worked directly with participants, introducing them to architectural thinking, governance frameworks and deployment considerations that are critical to enterprise AI projects.

According to John Young, Global Managing Director – Partner Solution Architects at Databricks, organisations are increasingly standardising on platforms that combine data, analytics and AI.

“Preparing talent to work in these unified environments is becoming critical. Collaborations like this help students build that foundation early, so they can contribute meaningfully from day one in enterprise settings,” he noted.

“The hackathon brought valuable motivation, perspective and experience into the classroom and challenged students to think beyond the academic lessons of their coursework,” Derek Riley, PhD, Professor, Program Director of Computer Science, Milwaukee School of Engineering, said.

The program is part of Persistent’s broader collaboration with Databricks through which the company helps enterprises modernise data platforms and scale analytics, generative AI and enterprise AI adoption.