500 Promising Individuals Worldwide Receive Linux Foundation IT Training & Certification Scholarships

Recipients, who otherwise could not afford this opportunity, will receive access to a training course and industry-recognized certification

AUSTIN, Texas, June 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, has announced the recipients of the 2022 Shubhra Kar Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) Scholarships. LiFT aims to increase diversity in open source technology by providing access to online and in-person training and certification exams for underserved demographics at no cost to the recipient. Since 2010, The Linux Foundation has awarded over 1,600 scholarships for millions of dollars worth of specialized, technical training to those who may not have the ability to afford this opportunity otherwise. The program has been renamed in honor of Shubhra Kar, the longtime CTO of The Linux Foundation who was tragically lost earlier this year.

For 2022, The Linux Foundation is awarding scholarships to 500 of the over 3,100 applicants – a record amount of applications – who vied to be selected in one of twelve categories.

This year's scholarship applicants reflect the diversity of open source, with ages of applicants ranging from 13 to 66 with the average age being 27 years old. Applications were received from 133 different countries. The open source novices and seasoned tech professionals selected to receive this year's scholarships serve as a reminder that interest in open source and technology generally crosses all demographics.

"Time and again we have seen so many promising individuals around the world benefit from professional open source training, which is why I am proud that we are able to once again offer this opportunity to 500 deserving individuals around the world," said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. "This group shows the promise that open source and collaborative development brings by opening doors to new careers, and also by bringing in new perspectives and worldviews that lead to better technology outcomes. We hope these recipients are also inspired by the memory of our friend and colleague Shubhra, who was an incredible technologist and human being, reflecting the best traits of the open source community."

Highlighted scholarship recipients for 2022 in each category are:

Blockchain Blockbusters
Aminat Atanda, 25, Nigeria
Aminat is a PhD student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where she studies computer science. She developed a Hyperledger Fabric application that records birth registration in Nigeria with verification from a hospital official, custodian of the child, and a registration official). She hopes further training in blockchain from the Linux Foundation will help her build and deploy this type of application commercially.

Kommireddy Hiranmai Sai Supriya, 19, India
Kommireddy is a computer science student and part of ETHWMN Fellowship of Devfolio, where she is learning about Web 3.0 and working on a basic NFT Minter Project. She is also building a game that utilizes NFTs for additional gaming perks. She previously explored Hyperledger and even helped create a project using it in the American Express Makeathon, but was never fully successful at implementing it. She hopes studying Hyperledger through this scholarship will improve her blockchain skills even further.

Cloud Captains
Josue Aquino, 25, El Salvador
Josue is completing his computer science degree at the University of El Salvador while also interning for a remote sensor company. He has been using Docker and Kubernetes in remote sensing research and helped build cloud native applications to maximize operations. He hopes to share what he learns from this scholarship to encourage more organizations in El Salvador to adopt cloud technologies.

Abdalla Elfateh Abdalla Bukhari, 22, Sudan
Abdalla volunteers as a sysadmin for the Sudanese Society of Neurosciences, where he is working to form a computational neuroscience research group. His goal is to utilize applied hybrid cloud to further studies and diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases which will support the healthcare system in Sudan. He hopes this scholarship will help him further improve his DevOps and container orchestration skills to accomplish this.

Cybersecurity Champions
Mukhtar Salim, 21, Kenya
Mukhtar helped start the Bsidesmombasa event, an independent, community-driven inclusive information security conference. He helps bring together women and youth in the community to learn about technology and how to safeguard themselves online, including how to avoid becoming spoofed or falling victim to phishing scams. He plans to share what he learns from this scholarship to improve what he is already teaching to the community.

Vicky Sy, 28, Philippines
Vicky is a Java developer who recently moved to the DevSecOps role. When she switched to a cybersecurity career, she saw the impact of open source and realized the necessity of gaining Linux expertise, which she hopes this scholarship will help with. She has already designed and implemented secure CI/CD pipelines that ensure that the deployment and maintenance of applications apply the principle of least privilege, hence preventing unauthorized access to pipelines and critical services.

Developer Do-Gooders
Dmytro Doroshenko, 31, Ukraine
Dmytro is a software developer who tries to give back in ways like updating documentation or contributing improvements to open source projects like the .NET Kafka Client. While like many in his country he is currently distracted by the ongoing war, he hopes to be able to use this scholarship to learn more about blockchain with the goal of becoming a Hyperledger developer.

Marsalis Weatherspoon, 33, United States
Marsalis is a public school music teacher in Arkansas who has become an open source evangelist since starting to use Linux a few years ago. He leverages Linux and open source software to champion community development in the areas of Black entrepreneurship and social justice work by steering organizations to programs like CiviCRM, LibreOffice Suite, Bitwarden and other open source technologies.

Hardware Heroes
Sarah Ouerghemmi, 27, Germany
Sarah is a PhD student studying wireless sensor networks at the Laboratory of Smart Diagnostics and Online Monitoring of The University of Applied Sciences Leipzig (HTWK). She is working on designing Low Noise Amplifiers that operate in different frequency ranges from simulation to hardware PCB implementation. She hopes this scholarship will help her pursue a career in embedded systems engineering.

Akhilesh Thorat, 27, India
Akhilesh works in the green energy sector, where he is involved in developing low cost energy efficient open source Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. These include the use of open source components such as Arduino based frameworks for use in water and energy management solutions. He hopes this scholarship will help him learn more about how Web 3.0 can help in the decentralization of data for IoT and big data with a focus on creating an open, connected, and intelligent website with improved user experience.

Linux Kernel Gurus
Kalyan Bhetwal, 27, United States
Kalyan is pursuing a masters degree in computer science and working as a graduate research assistant in the field of high performance computing. His research involves the use of low level kernel programming to get optimized performance in machines. This includes developing open source software, called Hydroframe, for hydrologists to simulate water flow models in the continental United States.

Marcelo Schmitt, 30, Brazil
Marcelo is a graduate student in computer science who started working with the Linux kernel community in 2018 by helping refactor staging IIO device drivers so that they could get added to the mainline tree. He conducts research into Linux kernel device driver testing and has helped improve the Kernel Testing Guide documentation page. He hopes this training will help improve his driver work and provide better mentoring to fellow kernel newbies.

Networking Notables
Jorge Miguel Campos Pelcastre, 31, Mexico
Jorge works in the telecommunications field, and helped create a system called NAS (Network Administrator System) with 100% open source technologies. The system supports different applications that configure, manage and operate one of the largest telecommunications networks in Latin America. It was built with microservices and is implemented with containers. He hopes this scholarship will help him learn technologies like Kubernetes to be able to implement it in the system and make it more stable and scalable.

Abderrahmen Errached Tlili, 22, France
Abderrahmen is a computer science student originally from Algeria. He is interested in learning more about RANs, which led to an internship at EURECOM where we works with OpenAirInterface, a platform to support mobile telecommunication systems like 4G and 5G based on open source. He hopes this scholarship will lead to more exposure to the ONF (Open Networking Foundation), so he can learn more about technologies like Kubernetes, gRPC, SDN, NFV, and protobuf.

Open Source Newbies
Hadiqa Khan, 21, Pakistan
Hadiqa is a computer science student with a passion for cybersecurity. She has been learning technologies like Linux, Node.js, React and others, even configuring her own kernel. She believes that Linux is a must-know technology to be effective in the cybersecurity field, so hopes this scholarship will give her the skills to start learning about and fixing actual bugs to reduce vulnerabilities.

Alexandra Shagzhina, 41, Hong Kong
Alexandra recently relocated from Russia to Hong Kong. She is hoping to transition from a career in recruitment to technology. She has already worked on a project at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she received a practical introduction to open source and the principles and tools of collaborative development. She hopes the training she receives from this scholarship will help her transition into a job in technology project management.

SysAdmin Super Stars
Maraiza Adami, 33, Brazil
Maraiza works with a feminist hackerspace called marialab, which serves several civil society organizations in Brazil. Some of the system administration tasks she engages in for marialab include Shell commands and text editors, as well as managing packages, processes, networks, users, NTP servers, and logs. She hopes the knowledge gained from this scholarship will help her break down more barriers to increase the representation of women in the Brazilian technology industry.

Patience Cheptoo, 29, Kenya
Patience holds a computer science degree and hopes to move into a sysadmin role from her current IT assistant position. She has used Linux and even managed to diagnose and troubleshoot the system with the help of internet forums. She hopes the training from this scholarship will help her to advance her sysadmin skills and be more marketable for a continuing IT career.

Teens-in-Training
Navtej Bhatti, 13, United States
Navtej is an 8th grader with big dreams of becoming an embedded developer, and is already off to a great start, having created a project that that allows you to boot Linux on the Depthcharge Coreboot payload used on Chromebooks (github.com/cb-linux/breath). Navtej hopes to learn more about the Linux kernel, specifically the embedded stack, through this scholarship.

Nikita Shrivastava, 18, India
Nikita has just begun studying computer science at university and is especially interested in artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning. She is contributing to a natural language processing project with a professor, and also is actively involved in the GirlScript Summer of Code bootcamps. She hopes this scholarship will teach her more about Linux and git so she is able to contribute more to projects in the future.

Web Development Wiz
Ali Amer, 22, Iraq
Ali was studying information technology at a university in Russia but was forced to return home due to the current geopolitical situation. He has previously learned Java, and also completed an edX software development course but is now focused on website development, including front-end development such as HTML, JavaScript, and React, as well as diving into the backend with Node.js and MongoDB. His hope is that by pursuing the OpenJS Node.js Application Developer (JSNAD) through this scholarship he will be able to become a professional full-stack developer.

Orim Dominic, 27, Nigeria
Orim studied biochemistry in university but has since decided to pursue a career in web development. He has studied general programming and Node.js and even built @PickAtRandom, a Twitter bot that automates random winners for giveaways, which he has open sourced. He has been frustrated by documentation that is sometimes lacking, so hopes to use the knowledge gained through this scholarship to give back to the community by contributing new documentation and updating existing ones.

Women in Open Source
Ruth Charlotte, 22, Kenya
Ruth is at university studying telecommunications and information engineering, and also works on a community development project for school-age girls in remote areas of Kenya to reduce the spike in unwanted pregnancies by increasing awareness and providing skills training. She hopes to disseminate the knowledge she gains from this scholarship to these girls starting at a foundational level, and gradually building their abilities in Linux as a community.

Ernitia Paramasari, 41, Indonesia
Ernitia has a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and a master's degree in sustainable energy systems. After years working in environmental science and a break to care for family, she recently began working as an entry-level data scientist. She spends her free time working with organizations like Women Who Code, Women in Tech, and AI Wonder Girls. She hopes to use the knowledge gained from this scholarship to find solutions to climate change and environmental issues through data science, while also continuing to share with other women.

Additional Resources
The full list of 2022 LiFT Scholarship recipients can be viewed here
Photographs of 2022 LiFT Scholarship recipients can be downloaded here

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation's methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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