The New England Board of Higher Education and the Business-Higher Education Forum have selected UConn as a recipient of the Connecticut Tech Talent Accelerator 3.0 Innovation Grant, making it one of 14 Connecticut institutions bringing together industry and education to expand AI education and workforce readiness.
This TTA 3.0 grant complements an earlier pilot grant announced in January, building on its success by deepening UConn Engineering’s focus on AI and pairing institutional innovation with structured support and cross-cohort learning.
With a TTA 3.0 Pilot Grant, the UConn team developed the AI-Enabled Guided Intelligent Systems (AEGIS) short course, designed to prepare Connecticut’s engineering workforce to design, deploy, and govern agentic AI systems that complete multi-step engineering tasks. Students participated in the first offering of this short course in the summer. Company cohorts and open enrollment options are now available. Interested companies or engineering professionals can learn more about the short course online.
With the TTA 3.0 Innovation Grant, UConn’s College of Engineering will create a 12-credit graduate certificate composed of four courses: AI Literacy for Engineering and Technical Professionals, Agentic AI for Engineering Workflows, AI for Physical Systems and the Manufacturing Floor, and AI for Model-Based Systems Engineering.
The grant and the certificate aim to equip engineers with the skills needed to thrive in a labor market being reshaped by AI.
“Engineers are increasingly being asked to use AI to solve complex problems, but knowing how to use an AI tool is different from knowing how to integrate AI responsibly across an entire engineering workflow,” says George Bollas, associate dean for research. “This certificate is designed to give engineers that systems-level perspective. Our goal is to prepare engineers not only to simply adopt AI, but to lead its responsible implementation.”
As principal investigator, Bollas will oversee the cross-disciplinary, industry-inspired AI graduate certificate. He is also the director of the Pratt & Whitney Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering.
“UConn Engineering has a strong track record of developing graduate programs that respond to the evolving needs of engineering and industry,” says dean JC Zhao. “This new certificate builds on that strength by bringing together expertise from across the College and our industry partners to create a rigorous, interdisciplinary program for practicing engineers. It is another example of how we are expanding our graduate-level offerings to provide engineers with opportunities to develop specialized expertise throughout their careers.”
UConn Engineering is partnering with Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business, for this initiative.
“Pratt & Whitney is committed to helping prepare the next generation of engineers for the increasingly complex demands of aerospace manufacturing,” says Pratt & Whitney Vice President of Engineering Matthew Teicholz. “AI is increasingly an important part of how we approach manufacturing, supply chains, and other engineering challenges, but its value depends on how effectively it can be integrated into real-world systems and processes. This partnership with UConn will help develop engineers who can connect AI capabilities with the practical needs of industry, while creating a model that can benefit manufacturers and suppliers across Connecticut.”
ConnStep, a nonprofit organization focused on Connecticut’s manufacturing growth, will also provide support to ensure the program reflects supply-chain challenges experienced across the state’s manufacturing ecosystem in multiple industries.
“Congratulations to the recipients and a growing roster of employer partners that are working side by side, pairing higher education’s expertise with employer insight to prepare people to succeed in an AI-driven economy,” said Kristen D. Fox, CEO of the Business-Higher Education Forum in a release issued by the forum. “By embedding employer voice, from curriculum design to work-integrated learning, this kind of close collaboration helps ideas move faster and reach further — giving these programs the durability to take root and serve as a model other partnerships can build on.”
According to Bollas and his team, the program will address a critical gap in Connecticut’s workforce. The new certificate will prepare engineers to apply AI across system lifecycle, from machine-learning models of physical systems to agentic workflows and AI-enabled model-based systems engineering. Students learn to generate, evaluate, verify, and govern AI-supported engineering models and decisions with appropriate traceability, safety controls, and human oversight.
Bollas said it addresses a growing need for engineers who can integrate artificial intelligence into the analysis, design, operation, and governance of complex engineered systems.
“In aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, energy, transportation, and related sectors, AI is increasingly used not only for data analytics, but also for system modeling, health-state estimation, predictive decision support, workflow automation, requirements development, architecture analysis, and verification and validation,” Bollas says. “These applications require professionals who understand both AI methods and the systems engineering principles needed to ensure technical rigor, traceability, safety, reliability, and accountable human oversight.”
Bollas went on to say any engineers are asked to adopt AI tools, automate decision processes, and improve operational resilience, but they often lack a systems-level framework for applying AI across interconnected products, production systems, suppliers, data flows, requirements, constraints, and lifecycle decisions.
This certificate will position systems engineering as the discipline for responsible and scalable AI deployment in manufacturing and supply-chain environments.
The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) “Systems Engineering Vision 2035” report anticipates that AI will reshape systems engineering methods, support system modeling and digital twins, and accelerate design and validation while introducing new challenges involving verifiability, safety, and trust. The U.S. Department of Defense has also identified model-based digital engineering, authoritative sources of truth, digital continuity, and workforce development as central to the modernization of complex-system acquisition and engineering practice.
More broadly, AI and big data are identified as the fastest-growing skill area through 2030, and 86% of surveyed employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their organizations, according to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2025.”
“The concentration responds to this need by preparing professionals who can apply AI within rigorous systems engineering processes rather than treating AI as an isolated computational tool,” Bollas says. “Graduates will be well positioned for careers in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, energy, and other technology-intensive sectors, supported by the U.S.’s Bureau of Labor Statistics projected growth of 34% in data-science employment and 7% across engineering occupations through 2034.”
UConn will launch the course sequence in spring of 2027.
