The DataPaths webinar series usually features professionals. Epidemiologists, oceanographers, journalists. People who have spent careers applying data science in the field. On April 1, three students from the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp took their place at the table.
Shrinithi Shaurya, Milana Lamdan, and Dhulfiqar Qasim are student ambassadors and graduates of the AI Bootcamp. They are high schoolers without published papers or research affiliations who got curious about artificial intelligence and found a place to develop that curiosity. On April 1, they joined Charlotte Dungan, Chief Learning Officer at the Mark Cuban Foundation, on a live webinar for educators across the country.
Each student brought a different project to the table. Milana worked with sensor data, training it to look at brain scans to identify different tumors. Shrinithi used AI to predict treatment outcomes for colorectal cancer patients, the kind of work that typically lives inside a graduate research lab. Dhulfiqar turned his attention to drug discovery, a field where failed experiments cost years and billions of dollars, and examined where AI could cut that waste.
None of this was assigned. The students chose it, which turned out to be the quiet through-line of the whole session.
The DataPaths series asks educators one question: What can students actually do with data science skills? The Bootcamp alumni answered with specifics, and each one traced the line from what they learned in the program to what they pursued on their own afterward. The program supplied technical grounding and enough support to push through hard problems, but their own questions gave the work its direction.
For the teachers attending the webinar, hearing it directly from students was the point. Professional speakers can describe data science careers from the outside. Still, students can explain what kept them going with something difficult, what kinds of encouragement actually landed, and what it felt like to finish a project they had no guarantee they could complete. Teachers left with something concrete to bring back to their students.
The DataPaths series, hosted by Education Development Center, runs throughout 2026 and draws speakers from epidemiology, oceanography, journalism, and business. Educators can watch the full session above.
The Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp offers free AI education to high school students nationwide. Learn more at markcubanai.org.
