- Each summer, Sanethia Thomas, Ph.D., brings UF students to South Africa to create tech solutions for community problems.
- This year, the students toured the Amazon AWS Skills Centre in Cape Town. An AWS site leader then watched the student presentations.
- In turn, Amazon AWS is partnering with UF to provide AI certification training during future Cape Town study-abroad trips.
Perhaps the most significant part of last summer’s study-abroad trip to South Africa is what it will mean for next summer’s study-abroad program in South Africa.
About 20 University of Florida students travel each year to South Africa with Sanethia Thomas, Ph.D., a senior lecturer with UF’s Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering. For six weeks starting in late May, the cohort of mostly engineering students develops technology that helps vulnerable South Africa residents.
But on this trip, executives with Amazon’s AWS Cape Town Skills Centre — one of three in the world — took notice of the UF students during emotional presentations about how their projects impacted those residents.
Consequently, Amazon AWS, which stands for Amazon Web Services, is now partnering with UF to provide Artificial Intelligence certificate training starting next summer. The training will complement the curriculum projects, enriching the already popular study-abroad program with a powerful industry partner in tech-savvy Cape Town.