Real-World Challenges Aligned to Your Coursework
Real scenarios from business, engineering, design, and analysis. Practice the work your degree prepares you for, earn verified credentials, build a portfolio recruiters can verify.
- CodeIntermediateNew
Automated Planner for a Field-Service Maintenance Schedule
Model the scheduling problem as either PDDL (Planning Domain Definition Language) or a constraint-satisfaction problem using a solver like OR-Tools. Define: actions (visit_site,…
- Planning
- Constraint Satisfaction
- Python Programming
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (CS Elective) - PresentationIntermediateNew
Run a Cross-Team Retrospective After a Failed Launch
Design a 3-hour structured retrospective using either Liberating Structures or Norm Kerr's 'Prime Directive' framing (assume people did the best job possible with what they knew…
- Retrospectives
- Facilitation
- Incident Analysis
Open coursework - AnalysisBeginnerNew
Cost-Model a Foundation-Model API Migration
You receive: 90 days of API logs (request volume, token distributions), the customer's golden eval set of 200 prompts, the incumbent and new pricing schedules, and quality ratin…
- Cost Modeling
- Ai Strategy
- Model Evaluation
AI for Business and AI Product Management - CodeSeniorNew
Min-Cost Max-Flow for Cloud Workload Placement
Receive 30 days of anonymized placement requests (workload CPU/memory shape, affinity rules), zone capacity per day, and cross-zone bandwidth costs. Model the placement as a min…
- Network Flows
- Algorithm Analysis
- Graph Algorithms
Advanced Algorithms Practice your coursework on real scenarios.
Every challenge is shaped from real-world context — not generic exercises. The work mirrors what your degree prepares you for.
Why Ewance
- ResearchIntermediateNew
Planning Under Uncertainty for a Last-Mile Delivery Fleet
Build a simulator of the 50-block area with stochastic travel times conditioned on weather and time-of-day. Implement value iteration (for a small state space), MCTS (Monte Carl…
- Planning Under Uncertainty
- Markov Decision Processes
- Monte Carlo Tree Search
Open coursework - ResearchIntermediateNew
Kernel Methods vs. Deep Learning on a Tiny-Data Drug-Discovery Task
You receive (or download) 3 public ADMET datasets from MoleculeNet (e.g., BBBP, Lipophilicity, FreeSolv). For each, train both: (a) a Gaussian process with a Tanimoto kernel ove…
- Kernel Methods
- Gaussian Processes
- Graph Neural Networks
Advanced Machine Learning - StrategyBeginnerNew
Code Review Bootcamp for an Early-Stage Mobile Team
Read the team's last 100 merged PRs (export provided) and tag the 10 worst review threads (rubber-stamp, bikeshed, missing context). Draft a 4-page code-review guideline coverin…
- Code Review
- Team Coaching
- Process Design
Software Construction - DesignIntermediateNew
Build Hybrid Keyword-Plus-Embeddings Search for a Legal Document Portal
Using the product context brief (legal_portal_brief), design a hybrid retrieval system that combines BM25 keyword scoring with dense embeddings and fuses the two ranked lists wi…
- Information Retrieval
- Bm25
- Vector Search
Open coursework - Browse challenges
Explore role
Product Manager
Ship product that solves real user problems. Combine user research, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment to turn ambiguous briefs into measurable wins — the role at the centre of modern software teams.
- CodeIntermediateNew
Build a GAN-Based Defect Generator for a Hardware Manufacturing Line
You receive around 60,000 good-unit images and around 380 defective-unit images across 4 defect classes. Train a class-conditional GAN (StyleGAN2-ADA or a smaller alternative fo…
- Gans
- Class Conditional Generation
- Data Augmentation
Deep Generative Models - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Tune OpenMP Performance on a Memory-Bound Genomics Pipeline
Profile the existing pipeline at 1, 4, 8, 16, 32, 48, 64 threads using Intel VTune + Linux perf. Identify the bottlenecks (likely candidates: NUMA-unaware memory allocation, fal…
- Openmp
- Numa Awareness
- False Sharing
High-Performance and Scientific Computing - CodeIntermediateNew
Safety-Critical Test Harness for an AV Planner
Use CARLA (open-source AV simulator) and encode 10 representative safety scenarios across 3 categories (cut-in, pedestrian emergence, signalized-intersection right-of-way). Writ…
- Simulation
- Scenario Testing
- Safety Evaluation
Open coursework - ResearchSeniorNew
Investigate Why Our Generative Model Memorizes Training Data
Pick a small open-source diffusion model (e.g., a Stable-Diffusion-class community model trained on LAION-subset). Reproduce a published membership-inference + extraction probe …
- Generative Models
- Memorization Analysis
- Differential Privacy
Advanced Deep Learning Build a verifiable portfolio.
Submissions become evidence. Reviewers with shipping experience score against a rubric; the result becomes a credential anyone can verify.
Why Ewance
- CodeBeginnerNew
Churn-Prediction Model for a B2B Vertical SaaS
Use 18 months of anonymized data (provided) covering: usage events, login frequency, support tickets, NPS responses, billing health, feature adoption, practice firmographics. De…
- Supervised Learning
- Python Programming
- Ml Applications
Machine Learning (CS Elective) - CodeIntermediateNew
Multi-Tenant Schema Migration for a Series-B HR SaaS
Design a 4-phase migration: (1) add new columns + tables, dual-write on every workflow mutation, (2) backfill 3.4 TB in chunks of around 50k rows per minute with throttling and …
- Multi Tenant Architecture
- Schema Migration
- Dual Write
Open coursework - ResearchSeniorNew
Price American Options with a Deep Hedging Notebook
Simulate price paths for a single underlying (geometric Brownian motion is fine as a baseline; bonus for stochastic volatility). Implement Longstaff-Schwartz Monte Carlo as the …
- Deep Learning
- Stochastic Modeling
- Derivatives Pricing
AI and Quantitative Finance - CodeIntermediateNew
Build a 5-Stage Pipelined RISC-V Core in Verilog
Implement the 5-stage pipeline with: hazard detection unit, forwarding paths (EX/MEM to EX, MEM/WB to EX), pipeline stalls for load-use hazards, and a simple static branch-not-t…
- Pipelining
- Hazard Detection
- Verilog
Computer Architecture - ResearchIntermediateNew
Design an Empirical Study of Pull Request Review Throughput
Using the provided pull request dataset and the stakeholder brief, design and run an empirical software-engineering study on review throughput. State three falsifiable hypothese…
- Empirical Software Engineering
- Software Analytics
- Statistical Analysis
Open coursework - CodeBeginnerNew
Build a Math Intelligent-Tutoring Assistant for High Schoolers
You receive: a curated set of 40 algebra problems with worked solutions, the company's pedagogy rubric ('hint, don't reveal' principle), and a baseline 'just answer' chatbot for…
- Intelligent Tutoring
- Prompt Engineering
- LLM Agents
AI in Education and Learning Analytics - CodeFoundationalNew
Rule-Based Intent Classifier for a Customer-Support Triage Bot
Build a rule-based classifier in Python that runs ordered rules (regex + keyword + simple heuristics) against ticket subject + body. Use a hierarchical rule structure (high-prec…
- Knowledge Representation
- Rule Based Systems
- Python Programming
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (CS Elective) - DesignIntermediateNew
Design a Crisis Information-Flow Analysis for a Newsroom
Using the sampled propagation log and the editorial brief in the provided materials, design and partially demonstrate an analysis that reconstructs the alert's 72-hour spread as…
- Computational Journalism
- Temporal Networks
- Network Science
Open coursework - PresentationBeginnerNew
Pitch an LLM Earnings-Call Analyst to an Equity Long-Short Team
Pick 3 publicly available US tech earnings-call transcripts (from a free source like sec.gov filings or company investor-relations pages) and build a retrieval-augmented LLM wor…
- Prompt Engineering
- Retrieval Augmented Generation
- LLM Evaluation
AI and Quantitative Finance - DesignIntermediateNew
Intelligent Interface Spec for an AI-Assisted Code Review Tool
Audit current AI-surface inconsistencies and map every AI signal to a confidence band (high / medium / speculative / unverified). Design a unified intelligent-interface spec: su…
- Intelligent Interfaces
- Interaction Design
- Hci Research Methods
Advanced Human-Computer Interaction - CodeBeginnerNew
Build a Source-to-Source Migration Tool for a Legacy API
Use Python's libcst (concrete syntax tree library) to parse customer code while preserving formatting. For each of the 14 transformations, write a CST visitor that matches the v…
- Abstract Syntax Trees
- Source To Source Transformation
- Python
Open coursework - DesignIntermediateNew
Design and Pitch an LLM-Powered Tutoring Product
As a 4-person team, deliver: (1) a product concept anchored in Jobs-to-be-Done (when X, I want Y so I can Z); (2) a Figma prototype of the full flow; (3) a partially functional …
- Product Design
- User Research
- LLM Evaluation
AI Software Engineering Group Project
Industry teams behind a decade of practitioner briefs
Hiring from this pool?
Sponsor a challenge and meet candidates through actual work.
Industry teams can shape briefs around the skills they hire for, then evaluate students on rubric-scored deliverables — not resumes.



















































































