Bhubaneswar: Udacity, the global lifelong learning platform, made the dreams of young Bhubaneswar resident and Udacity Nanodegree student come true by sending him to attend Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O 2018, held in Mountain View, early this month. Soumya had enrolled for Udacity Front-End Web Developer courses under the Google-Udacity Scholarship for Front End Developers in India, and has been invited to attend the event through the scholarship program
For the 19-year old B.Tech student Soumya, being present amongst the world’s best developers for these platforms was an educational and inspirational experience. As a student of Computer Science at Silicon Institute Of Technology, Bhubaneswar, travelling to be a part of Google I/O was only possible due to his studies at Udacity. The annual Google I/O conference showcases technical in-depth sessions focused on building web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open source platforms such as Android, Chrome and Chrome OS, APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine, and more. This year, Google unveiled its AI-driven assistant’s ability to pass the Turing Test, making this a historical moment for the development of AI. For this young Bhubaneshwar resident, travelling all the way to California to witness this landmark moment was nothing short of a life-changing moment.
Commenting on the journey and the opportunity, Soumya Ranjan Behera said, “The Google-Udacity scholarship transformed me from a web-development enthusiast to someone with the experience and knowledge to win competitions and go places around the world. Learning from the best instructors – James and Julia of Udacity – and with real-time assistance from Udacity’s Live Help sessions provided in-depth explanations of critical topics while rectifying our mistakes. I would urge the other young people of Bhubaneshwar to realise that hard work can make dreams come true. Winning the competition was the result of the incredible support accorded to me by Udacity, which helped me sharpen my developer skills and achieve excellence.”
Udacity partners with Google and several other leading technology companies across the world to develop the curriculum for its Nanodegree, as well as to accord its graduates the best possible employment opportunities upon the completion of the Nanodegree. It has also collaborated with companies like Google, Bertelsmann, Lyft, and AT&T to offer scholarships programs and have supported around 180,000+ scholarships globally so far. Udacity uses programs like this to better achieve its goal of democratizing access to its Nanodegree programs, the best-in-class technology education available in the world today.