The Linux Foundation has announced the winners of its 2021 Linux Foundation Training Scholarships, which award online and in-person training and certification exams at no cost to underserved demographics from around the world.

The Linux Foundation awarded over 1,100 scholarships in the 10 years since LiFT scholarships began in 2010. This year adds 500, making the total number awarded much higher than in previous years. Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said the increase in the number of awards was a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed to help those affected.

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“With the effects of the pandemic lingering, we realized it was essential to award 500 again this year rather than return to historic levels. The level of talent and potential evident amongst this year’s winners is staggering, and we are happy to be able to contribute to their future success,” Zemlin said. 

Ten categories were available for scholarship contestants to apply for: Blockchain blockbusters, cloud captains, developer do-gooders, Linux kernel gurus, networking notables, open source newbies, sysadmin super stars, teens-in-training, web development wizzes and women in open source. 

Those who won awards were all selected for “the potential for greatness in future participation in the open source community,” The Linux Foundation said, and represent individuals from 107 countries on six continents. 

Those curious about competing for a grant in 2022 or beyond should know who they’re up against: It’s a talented pool of people. A few that the foundation singled out for recognition include: 

• Monil Vadodariya, 16, India, a straight-A high school student who volunteers to teach younger children about technology and has even developed proctored quizzing software for his school. He plans to use his LiFT scholarship to learn more about AI, machine learning and other emerging technologies.

• Nathalia Nascimento, 28, Brazil, who has a degree in computer engineering but finds vendor lock-in among networking hardware frustrating. She has been working to implement software-defined networking for the past five years and plans to use LiFT training to implement fully open-sourced SDN infrastructure. 

• Danson Muia, 25, Kenya, who develops open-source software tools to solve local problems, like an online property management system he built for small landlords in Kenya. Muia published the code for his application on GitHub for others to use and wants to use LiFT to build better apps. 

• Fakhar un Nisa, 29, Pakistan, is a trained veterinarian and Ph.D. candidate who uses Linux for analysis and data interpretation in her research genotyping cattle breeds. She wants to use LiFT to learn more about Linux in order to improve her research and advance further into bioinformatics. 

SEE: C++ programming language: How it became the foundation for everything, and what’s next (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

A full list of recipients can be found online.

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