Read how you can participate in the program for a chance to receive free access to a Machine Learning engineer Nanodegree at Udacity.
It’s the second time Amazon Web Services have partnered with Udacity to offer free access to the Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree and AWS Machine Learning Community (also known as AWS DeepRacer Community) is part of it providing support to the students.
The Scholarship Program
AWS offers 425 scholarships for a cost-covered Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree program valued at $1,000.
Machine learning is an exciting and rapidly developing technology that has the power to create millions of jobs and transform our daily lives. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum, by 2025, 97 million new roles may be created as a result of ML innovation. However, only today’s developers have the skills to act on these opportunities now. Proximity to high-quality education, cost of traditional education, and allocating time to start and complete new learning projects make learning ML more complicated.
In the Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree you learn advanced ML techniques and algorithms, including how to package and deploy models to a production environment.
AWS is also collaborating with several non-profit organizations through the We Power Tech Program to increase the diversity and talent in technical roles, including organizations like Girls In Tech and the National Society of Black Engineers. As part of these ongoing relationships, the non-profit organizations will help encourage women and underrepresented groups to participate in the AWS Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree Scholarship Program. Organizations like these develop programs to inspire,
support, train, and empower people from underrepresented groups to pursue careers in tech.
“AWS strives to help level the playing field for women and people of color, who have been
underrepresented in the tech industry for far too long. We are thrilled to collaborate with Udacity to make this sort of technical training more widely available and accessible,” said LaDavia Drane, global head of Inclusion, Diversity & Equity at AWS. “We look forward to seeing the incredible innovations in machine learning that are sure to come from this initiative.”
“Tech needs representation from women, BIPOC, and other marginalized communities in every aspect of our industry. Companies must make meaningful and measurable change in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion to reach their greatest potential, and skills training programs uniquely tailored to increase representation from these groups are necessary for technology to achieve all that it’s capable of. Girls in Tech applauds our collaborator AWS, as well as Udacity, for breaking down the barriers that so often leave women behind in tech. Together, we aim to give everyone a seat at the table.” Adriana Gascoigne, Founder and CEO, Girls in Tech.
How to get the scholarship
- Register for the AWS Machine Learning Engineer Program at Udacity (unlimited registrations, open till the
23rd of June 202112th of July 2021) Updated: submissions end date extended, the course has started but you can still join! - On 28th of June join the AWS Machine Learning Foundations course that you will be enrolled in (more on that below)
- Complete the course and then the assessment it ends with by 11th of October 2021
- Top 425 students will receive the scholarship
- The course ends on the 25th of January 2022
The AWS Machine Learning Foundations Course (free) includes the following objectives:
- Learn the fundamentals of ML
- Learn object-oriented programming best practices
- Learn computer vision with AWS DeepLens, reinforcement learning with AWS DeepRacer, and generative AI with AWS DeepComposer.
- Dedicate 3–5 hours a week on the course and work towards earning one of the follow-up Nanodegree program scholarships
Do read the FAQs on the program page. Bear in mind you will need to have an active AWS account to perform the tasks in the courses.
Community engagement
At AWS Machine Learning Community we are fuelled by curiosity. We have turned the racing competition into a knowledge and effort sharing challenge. Nothing will help you better expand and strengthen your knowledge then helping others learn.
We want to learn with you, that’s why on our Slack (join here) we’ve created a #learning-udacity channel where we can help each other.
We will also participate in the Ask Me Anything sessions that Udacity are preparing throughout the foundations course to help you prepare for the assessment.
I remember when the 2019 challenge took place, we’ve had the community members count triple in two weeks, it was a great experience to be able to respond to so much curiosity.
We’ve had a few of our community members participate in the course then, one of them, Juv Chan, ended that year earning the AWS Machine Learning Certification and went on to organise a hugely successful DeepRacer novice league and become an AWS ML Hero the year after. A few words from him:
The AWS Machine Learning Nanodegree Program enabled me to learn and achieve valuable machine learning skills at my own pace with interactive modules that made learning fun and effective. Carving out time to learn machine learning can be very hard, especially under the demanding schedules that software engineers work from. The flexibility offered by Udacity Nanodegrees lets me learn new skills on a timetable that works for me.”
Juv Chan’s testimony
Head to the AWS Machine Learning Engineer Program at Udacity and register for your chance to receive the scholarship and gain valuable knowledge on training and deploying machine learning in cloud. And join the AWS Machine Learning Community so that we can learn together.
Thank you to Cameron Peron from AWS for providing resources and information on the program.