Upgrade AI work with the Applied Research Internship

Ph.D. students can expand their AI knowledge and move their research forward through Capital One’s Applied Research Internship Program. During the 12-week summer internship, you’ll engage in high-impact applied research, exploring novel and interesting AI challenges that will help create transformative customer experiences.  

Check out what four 2024 Applied Research interns worked on and learned from the program. 

Working with innovative tech

After meeting a few technologists from Capital One through his Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, Alex was craving an experience where he could solve tactical tech problems. He found that with the Applied Research Internship Program. 

Alex worked with the Behavioral Modeling team to learn how they create flexible AI and machine learning models that different Capital One teams can use to help their customers. His internship experience at Capital One allowed him to design, build and deploy models using cutting-edge tech. 

“People at Capital one are invested in understanding the latest tech, models and research,” Alex said. “There’s definitely an investment here where you’re not playing catch up, you’re leading the way.”

Collaborating with passionate colleagues

Chi’s Ph.D. in electrical and electronics engineering at Carnegie Mellon University is about how to evaluate and improve the robustness and trustworthiness of machine learning models and large language models. The Applied Research Internship Program helped her find answers. 

Chi spent her time working alongside data scientists, software engineers and applied researchers on the Large Language Model Customization team, where she helped create a method to evaluate the correctness of large language models. 

While Chi enjoyed the work, her favorite experience with the internship was getting to collaborate with her coworkers and leaders. 

“Before this program, all of my machine learning experience had been in an academic setting, which can be pretty solitary as you’re so focused on your research,” Chi said. “At Capital One, I had mentors who checked in on me daily and fellow interns I could turn to for support. That was pretty special.”

Creating new machine learning models

Dongyue was drawn to Capital One for our research with deep learning within tabular data, which allows models to transfer knowledge learned from one task to another. And with the Applied Research Internship Program, he got to do the hands-on work he desired. 

While interning with our Foundational Model Research team, Dongyue designed AI algorithms for tabular data, studied recent trends in large language models and deployed techniques to research how new foundation models can be built for representing tabular data.

“Capital One is the place to be for working with new developments in AI research,” Dongyue said. “I learned something new and had fun every day. Everyone is always collaborating and chatting about what they're learning. It's exciting to be around such curious people."

Keeping customers safe

After spending two summers doing contract AI work with Capital One, Daniel was ready to be even more embedded in data science, machine learning and AI as an intern for the Applied Research Internship Program. 

Daniel spent his internship working on explaining the behavior of machine learning models. While Daniel expanded his PyTorch skills, the experience also gave him access to a cluster of graphic processing units (GPUs) to use in his research.

Through every step of the experience, fellow interns, colleagues and leaders were there to answer any question and share their own discoveries.

“The level of investment in machine learning and AI at Capital One is so impressive,” Daniel said. “You’re surrounded by smart, dedicated coworkers who are just excited to work with new tech and help people.”