Historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., is teaming up with Amazon to create pipelines of diverse science talent and differentiated research. Under the agreement, Amazon will fund faculty research projects in the College of Engineering and Architecture at the university with an initial focus on machine learning and natural language processing.
As a component of these awards, faculty are assigned an Amazon Research Liaison who will stay in regular contact with the awardee for the duration of the project. Amazon Research Liaisons are technical subject matter experts who stay informed about the progress of the project and serve as a bridge to Amazon’s scientific community.
The collaboration builds on an existing relationship between Howard and Amazon Studios to “diversify the entertainment industry by creating a pipeline for Black and other underrepresented students” and a 10-week summer practicum program sponsored by Amazon Web Services, which enabled Howard University undergraduate students to pursue both a cloud fundamentals course and an applied internship with AWS.
“We are confident that the scholarly works produced by this important research collaboration will advance technological innovation in strategic domains shared by Howard and Amazon,” said Harry Keeling, associate professor of computer science at Howard University. “Further, we believe that this collaboration will attract additional funding as well as accelerate our graduates’ preparation for careers within Amazon.”
