The Linux Foundation Awards 14 Training and Certification Scholarships

Students and recent graduates, Linux beginners, longtime sysadmins, aspiring kernel developers, and passionate Linux users are all counted among the winners announced today who will receive a 2016 Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) scholarship.

The LiFT Scholarship Program gives free training courses to individuals who may not otherwise have access to these opportunities.  The recipients will also receive a Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) or Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) exam.

This year, 14 LiFT scholarship recipients were chosen from more than 1,000 applicants, spanning in age from 13 to 66 and hailing from six continents.

The training provides recipients with the tools they need to advance their career or get started in one of the most lucrative jobs in IT. According to the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report, 65 percent of hiring managers say open source hiring will increase more than any other part of their business over the next six months, and 79 percent of hiring managers have increased incentives to hold on to their current open source professionals.

“I am currently seeking a full-time position as a Linux kernel developer, preferably in open source,” said Ksenija Stanojevic, 29, an engineer and former Outreachy intern from Serbia who is a LiFT scholarship recipient in the Kernel Guru category. “This scholarship will directly help me achieve my goals. Apart from giving more job opportunities it will allow me to work in a field that I love and am passionate about.”

Over the past six years, The Linux Foundation has awarded 48 scholarships worth more than $130,000 to current and aspiring IT professionals.

“Providing scholarships for advanced training helps those individuals who directly benefit from it to then contribute to existing open source projects and even start new ones, as well as pass their knowledge along to their communities,” said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin.  “We hope these scholarships serve as a catalyst for helping open source continue to grow and thrive.”

This year’s winners across seven categories include:

Academic Aces

Ahmed Alkabary, 23, Canada. A recent graduate of the University of Regina, where he earned degrees in computer science and mathematics.

Tetevi Placide Ekon, 24, Burkina Faso. A graduate student studying civil engineering at the 2iE Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering.

Developer Do Gooder

Luis Camacho Caballero, 42, Peru. A Linux user since 1998 who started a project to preserve endangered South American languages using Linux.

Kurt Kremitzki, 28, United States. Studying biological and agricultural engineering at Texas A&M and working with a university in Mexico to design irrigation systems for a Mayan community in the Yucatan.

Linux Kernel Guru

Alexander Popov, 28, Russia. A Linux kernel developer who has had 14 patches accepted into the mainline kernel to date.

Ksenija Stanojevic, 29, Serbia. An Outreachy intern who has worked on splitting the existing IIO driver into MFD with ADC and touchscreen parts and has contributed to the Year 2038 project.

Linux Newbies

Yasin Sekabira, 27, Uganda. A graduate of the computer science program at Makerere University.

Lorien Smyer, 52, United States. A former bookkeeper who decided she wanted to start a new career in computer science.

SysAdmin Super Star

Jacob Neyer, 20, United States. Deployed with the United States Air Force, where he administers Linux servers.

Sumilang Plucena, 33, Philippines. A systems analyst at the largest hospital in the Philippines, which runs Linux on all its servers.

Teens-in-Training

Sarah Burney, 13, United States. An eighth grader at her middle school in Maryland, who has already completed a data science course at Johns Hopkins, as well as several coding programs.

Florian Vamosi, 15, Hungary. A grammar school student who has been using Linux since age 10, who is working on a color recognition system to categorize stars in astronomical research.

Women in Linux

Shivani Bhardwaj, 22, India. A recent computer science graduate and Outreachy intern who has already had more than 75 patches accepted to the staging driver of the Linux kernel.

Farlonn Mutasa, 21, South Africa. Passed the CompTIA Linux+ certification exam, which opened the door to a sysadmin internship.
 

The Linux Foundation aims to increase diversity in technology and the open source community and support career development opportunities for the next generation, especially those who have traditionally been underrepresented in open source and technology.

Get more information on The Linux Foundation Community Giving Programs.