Meet the Scholars of the Sapiente TECH Scholarships 2026

Talent is everywhere, but the right opportunity to showcase talent isn’t. Every year, thousands of young students around the world dream of building their future. Whether it’s writing algorithms, designing robots, becoming a researcher, or developing an app, each student has their own aspirations. But dreaming is the easy part. What’s actually hard is finding the right mentorship, guidance, and access that turns their dreams into real capability.

This year, two exceptional students found their door to opportunity with Sapiente. This is their story.

What was the Sapiente TECH Scholarship Programme

The Sapiente TECH Scholarship Programme was built on an ambitious motive: that most promising young students deserve outstanding mentorship to make a real-world difference.
Rather than enrolling in another online course or a generic certificate, Sapiente wanted to create something closer to Oxbridge-level guidance that’s deeply personal, intellectually rigorous, and completely around the student's needs.

Our scholars accepted into the programme work directly with world-class mentors, researchers, and professors from institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Harvard, UCL, and the University of Manchester, along with professionals from Google, Microsoft, Snapchat and Walt Disney.

Both of this year’s scholars were mentored directly by Dr. Massimiliano Patacchiola, CEO of Sapiente Education and a former AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, Snapchat, and Huawei, and someone who has worked at the frontier of the field.

The 2026 TECH Scholarship provided two fully funded pathways:

1. The Mastery Programme in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence: A 3-month, deeply immersive one-to-one research programme, comprising 20 bespoke live mentoring sessions. The scholar will work side-by-side with Dr. Massimiliano to develop a college-level research paper- the kind of independent research work that top university admissions teams look for in their students.

2. The Intensive Programme in Robotics & Artificial Intelligence: A fast-paced, high-impact, 2-week print, delivered through 10 one-to-one live sessions. Designed for students who learn by building, under the guidance of Dr. Massimiliano, to learn how to think, problem-solve, and engineer like real robotists and AI professionals.

Both pathways give students the opportunity to receive individual attention, elite mentorship, and the right guidance at the right moment, which can change their entire career trajectory.

The Scale of Ambition: 85+ Applicants for 2 Places

When applications opened for the Sapiente TECH Scholarship Programme 2026, the response we received made one thing very clear to us: the hunger for high-quality AI, Computer Science and Robotics mentorship among young people is enormous.

More than 85 students applied from across the globe, competing for 2 scholarship places, each bringing their own innovative ideas. Reviewing those applications was humbling and difficult at the same time. The Sapiente team assessed each applicant not just on their technical skills, but on curiosity, drive, and the potential to make real use of their mentorship experience with us.

From more than 85 remarkable applicants, we could award only 2 scholarships.

Meet Alicia and Rianna: The Sapiente TECH Scholars of 2026.

Meet Alicia - Mastery Programme, Computer Science & AI

“One of my biggest dreams is to pursue a PhD and build a career in research,” Alicia says. She has always been drawn to learning, asking questions, and exploring how technology can solve real-world problems, especially AI, which excites her most.

When asked about what attracted her to our scholarship programme, Alicia said,“What attracted me most was that Sapiente is not just about taking classes, it is about joining a community of curious and motivated people who share a passion for innovation and research. As someone who hopes to pursue a PhD in the future, I was especially inspired by the possibility of collaborating with people from different backgrounds, working on meaningful projects, and potentially contributing to research that could lead to a publication. I know that experiences like these are essential for developing the mindset of a researcher and preparing for graduate studies.”

Over three months, Alicia worked one-to-one with her mentor, Dr. Massimiliano, on a research project, investigating differences in RNA in mice raised under different environmental conditions, including zero gravity, microgravity, and neuromuscular disease. Using AI and machine learning methods, Alicia compressed the RNA data for each group and compared their features in a lower-dimensional space, working to identify meaningful relationships, similarities, and differences. Her work sits alongside research being done at NASA, contributing to a growing understanding of how gravity affects human biology in space.

Across 20 live sessions, Alicia has fully developed a college-level research paper, the kind of academic work that will help her stand out in her university applications.

"One of the most meaningful parts of my experience has been interacting with Max, who has extensive knowledge of machine learning. Our conversations and his guidance sparked a genuine passion for ML in me. Since then, I have become increasingly interested in understanding how machine learning can be applied to real research problems, and I now spend a significant amount of time studying the subject independently. Overall, Sapiente has helped me develop a much stronger interest in machine learning and research. More than teaching me specific techniques, it encouraged me to become an independent learner and to approach scientific problems with greater curiosity and persistence."

For Alicia, the scholarship is more than writing her research paper; it was about discovering what she’s really capable of when given the right guidance and opportunity.

Meet Rianna - Intensive Programme, Robotics & AI

In just two weeks, Rianna went from theory to hands-on execution, working daily with her mentor on “Voice-Based Parkinson’s Disease Detection Using Machine Learning,” a project for building a non-invasive Parkinson’s screening system powered by speech analysis.

Rianna extracted clinically relevant acoustic and nonlinear features from voice recordings, trained a machine learning classifier capable of distinguishing Parkinson's speech from healthy speech, and then took the project a step further by building and deploying a full web application that lets users upload or record their voice and receive a real-time prediction, hosted on live cloud infrastructure.

The result is a functional proof of concept: a working, accessible screening tool that demonstrates how AI-assisted diagnostics could one day support healthcare professionals, built end-to-end, in just ten intensive sessions.

When asked about her experience at Sapiente, Rianna said, "My mentor’s feedback was invaluable in helping me develop my work, improve my ideas, and overcome challenges throughout the project. I am especially grateful for how consistently he responded to my emails, always taking the time to provide thoughtful suggestions and guidance whenever I needed it. His encouragement and willingness to help played a significant role in my progress throughout the programme.”

The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters

Alicia and Rianna’s stories are not just two individual success stories. They’re proof of something much bigger: what happens when talented young people are matched with the right mentorship, the right structure and the right pathway to reach their full potential.

What they needed was an opportunity to walk alongside an expert, showing them what’s possible when curiosity meets guidance. Our TECH Scholarship Programme wanted to do this exact thing: to have a positive impact on students’ career trajectories.
Every cohort of scholars will add to our growing community of young innovators in multiple disciplines. This is only the beginning. More scholars, more success stories and more breakthroughs are along the way.

Follow the Journey

Alicia and Rianna’s journeys are just getting started, so is ours. Follow Sapiente Education on Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin, to be the first to know of our upcoming scholarship programmes, and to be there when the next generation of scholars is announced.