Katia Shek is no stranger to the startup hustle. The rising senior in Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy has launched multiple ventures during her undergraduate years. But thanks to a new workshop series hosted by The Garage, her entrepreneurial pace has gone from fast to turbocharged.
Catalyst: Building with AI is a groundbreaking series designed to empower students, researchers and innovators of all backgrounds to tap into the power of AI — no technical experience required. Through hands-on sessions, participants learn how to harness generative and no-code/low-code AI tools to prototype faster, market smarter and build more effectively.
“AI is helping entrepreneurs unlock ideas they may not have had the technical tools to realize before,” said Mike Raab, executive director of The Garage. “When you can show your idea instead of just pitching it, you’re far more likely to inspire action, whether that’s from potential users, funders or collaborators.”
Breaking barriers, building faster
The Catalyst series debuted this past spring on the Evanston campus with three high-impact workshops, which focused on bringing ideas to life, developing products and creating impactful marketing with AI tools like Galileo AI, Bolt, Midjourney and more.
Shek attended a workshop session just as she was developing her latest venture, Lex, a startup combining the intimacy of phone calls with the fluency-building potential of conversational AI to help users learn new languages.
“These AI tools removed barriers I would have spent weeks trying to overcome,” Shek said. “They allowed a non-technical founder like me to build something real — and fast.”
Within 24 hours of attending the workshop, Shek and her six-person team had a working prototype. Lex soon entered private beta, powered by insights gained from Catalyst.
From campus to clinic: AI meets medicine
Following the success on the Evanston campus, The Garage expanded Catalyst to the Chicago campus in collaboration with the Institute for AI in Medicine. The special two-part series introduced students, faculty and medical researchers to AI tools tailored for the life sciences.
Karen Gutzman, a librarian at Northwestern’s Galter Health Sciences Library, attended the sessions with a bold idea: Could AI help uncover patterns buried in thousands of publications from Northwestern Medicine?
Armed with what she learned, Gutzman is now building an AI-enhanced analysis tool using the publication database for the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Core at Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Applied Health Research on Aging. If successful, she’ll scale it to Prism, Northwestern Feinberg’s institutional research repository making it easier for researchers to identify collaborations, funding sources and population impacts.
“AI gives us a chance to tell a deeper story about the impact of our research,” she said. “It’s not just about discovery, it’s about visibility, collaboration and reach.”
What’s next
With more than 120 participants across five Catalyst sessions — and growing demand from students, faculty and staff — The Garage is already planning its next series of workshops for fall.
“Catalyst is about lowering the bar to innovation,” said Raab. “You don’t need a computer science degree or years of coding experience. You just need curiosity, a bold idea and the willingness to experiment.
Source: https://news.northwestern.edu/