Co-op at Mass General Brigham Solidifies Plans for AI in Healthcare Career
After working for more than two years in the technology industry, Shikhar Patel, MS’25, information systems, began his pursuit of a graduate degree at Northeastern that would help him develop expertise in AI and large language models. A co-op at Mass General Brigham reinforced his career plans.
Shikhar Patel, MS’25, information systems, has always been drawn to the world of technology. His journey began as an undergraduate in electrical and electronics engineering at Nirma University in Gujarat, India, where he discovered a deep passion for software development, programming, and computer architecture. This interest led him to work as a data engineer at HCL Technologies, where he spent two years developing innovative solutions for the healthcare and fintech industries.
As he delved deeper into large language models and their transformative potential, he realized something was missing. Determined to expand his expertise, he set his sights on a master’s degree that would blend technical rigor with industry relevance. That’s when he found Northeastern University’s information systems program and saw it as the perfect match.
The program’s reputation for industry-aligned coursework and strong student feedback made it an easy choice. He was particularly excited about courses like Network Structures and Cloud Computing and Big Data and Intelligent Analytics, which provided him with hands-on experience in scalable solutions, AI applications, and real-world data challenges. This prepared him for the next big step, a co-op experience.
For Patel, the co-op program was a game-changer. With guidance from Gail Schwartz, assistant co-op coordinator, and Jessica Fisher, associate co-op coordinator, in the Multidisciplinary Masters Co-op Programs, he navigated both academic and professional hurdles to land a coveted role on the enterprise AI and data engineering team at Mass General Brigham. Patel says networking through LinkedIn was also helpful in securing this job.
As a co-op, he worked on designing scalable data pipelines, integrating diverse data sources via APIs, and enhancing data warehousing systems to drive strategic decision-making. He also built interactive Tableau dashboards to visualize key performance indicators (KPIs) and conducted API testing to ensure seamless system integration. His work underscored how AI and data engineering can revolutionize healthcare innovation and patient care.
Patel also tackled an ambitious AI-driven project as part of a team that developed a medical diagnostics tool. This innovative system combined Pinecone Vector Database for similarity searches, OpenAI’s GPT models for diagnostics, and Apache Airflow for automated data.