Linux Foundation Announces 2015 Linux Training Scholarship Recipients

Winners reflect diversity in the next generation of the Linux SysAdmins and developers

SEATTLE – LinuxCon + CloudOpen + ContainerCon, August 18, 2015 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the recipients of its annual Linux Training Scholarship Program.

This is the fifth year Linux Foundation has hosted this program, which has awarded a total of 34 scholarships totalling more than $100,000 in free training to professionals who may not otherwise have access to these opportunities.

More than 850 entries were received this year across seven categories. The most popular submission category was again SysAdmin Super Star, demonstrating the lucrative career opportunities professionals know are available in this a area with the proper training and certifications. This category was followed in popularity by Linux Newbies and Whiz Kids. Submissions were received from six continents, and applicants averaged 29 years of age, showing the prevalence of interest in Linux from across generations and geographies.

“This year we’re nearly tripling the number of people who are being awarded with our Linux training scholarships. We hope this can increase access to Linux training and ultimately Linux certifications among the most talented IT professionals and developers around the world,” said Amanda McPherson, chief marketing officer at The Linux Foundation. “From South America to Europe, the United States and Asia, this year’s Linux training winners represent the diversity in the Linux community and the global impact Linux is having on the world. Congratulations to this year’s winners!”

Scholarship recipients in each category are as follows:

Developer Do-Gooder

Yashdeep Saini, 21, India – A graduate of NMIMS University Mumbai, Yashdeep has a particular interest in cybersecurity. He has recently started playing with ELF headers to understand the working of loaders and memory organization needed for Linux. His goal is to become a kernel developer, targeting the possible exploitation vectors and trying to find solutions to fight them.

Toby Jee, 37, Australia – Toby is a software developer at Innovit in Sydney, who currently contributes to Linux development with his own projects on GitHub and Bitbucket. He hopes that formal Linux training will enable him to contribute to Linux documentation, especially around Fedora One – his preferred distribution. He is also passionate about education and would like to teach children about open source by showing them how to use Raspberry Pi’s with Pidora.

Kernel Guru

Kiran Padwal, 27, India – Kiran is a software engineer at Smartplay Technologies in Pune. He has submitted basic patches to stabilize the kernel to check error for memory managed resource APIs to allocate memory, checkpatch warnings and device tree support for i2c devices and was part of da9055 codec device driver development. He hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the kernel through training so he can submit more and higher quality patches.

Vaishali Thakkar, 20, India – Vaishali is a Linux Kernel Intern through Outreachy, whose first contribution to the Linux kernel was running Coccinelle semantic patch over staging directory files. These days she is working on removing module init/exit boilerplate code with standard helper macros and has introduced some new helper macros herself. She hopes to eventually rise to the level of kernel maintainer.

Linux Newbies

Kevin Barry, 32, Ireland – Kevin holds a PhD in music and taught himself programming in his spare time. Inspired by a lecture given by Linux Foundation Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman, he submitted his first patch for LilyPond. He has since completed the free Intro to Linux course with edX and put that knowledge to use by automating some of his work with shell scripts. He hopes to become a Linux SysAdmin to move his music department to open source.

Junko Ueda, 43, Japan – Junko completed the free Intro to Linux course with edX but also has some experience managing customer databases on Linux. She left the workforce to be a stay-at-home mom and now wants to become certified as a Linux SysAdmin as a way to break back in. She loves that there’s so many things to discover about Linux, that you can never be bored with it.

SysAdmin Superstar

Erich Noriega, 37, Canada – Born in Mexico, Erich recently moved to Canada with his partner. He previously worked on an electronic government initiative in Mexico, using Linux for running load balancers and DNS Roundrobbins. Since moving, he has been working on a prototype for an embedded PI hardware and pressure and temperature sensors for his partner’s family’s maple syrup plantation. He hopes formal training will enable him to build a career in his adopted country.

Enrique Sevillano, 42, United States – Enrique is the IT manager at White River Electric Association, where he has worked on everything from storage to filesystems to virtualization from Microsoft to Linux. He hopes that formal training through this scholarship will enable him to move onto more complex topics, such as penetration testing and cloud solutions.

Teens-in-Training

Eduardo Mayorga Téllez, 17, Nicaragua – Eduardo has been using Linux since he was 9 years old. He is starting an electronic engineering degree at the Nicaraguan National University of Engineering and hopes to use that to become a kernel developer focused on driver development. He has heard the argument that people don’t want to use Linux due to hardware compatibility and plans to be the person to change that.

RJ Murdok, 15, United States – RJ is getting ready to start his freshman year of high school. Despite being legally blind, he’s been learning Linux for three years and submits bug reports in his spare time. He recently built a computer for the first time and plans to install openSUSE on it. His goal is to work with Linux in robotics and perhaps also teach Linux at the university level one day.

Whiz Kids

Anthony Hooper, 23, Jamaica – Anthony originally took the safe route in Jamaica, studying hospitality management at university but his true passion is technology. He taught himself to use the command line and has never looked back. He hopes the knowledge he gains from this scholarship will enable him to get a job as a Linux SysAdmin, and then plans to share that knowledge by teaching Linux to children in his local community.

Kyri’ay Vanderpoel, 22, United States – Kyri’ay works as a helpdesk technician at Systeem Medical while studying computer science at the University of North Texas. His father introduced him to Arch Linux when he was 17, and he’s been learning more about it ever since. His goal is to work in secure development, penetration testing, cloud security, or database designs after graduation and thinks a formal Linux training course will help him achieve that.

Women in Linux

Nancy Iris Quiroga, 33, Argentina – Nancy is a biologist who taught herself Linux to use with statistical analysis, GIS and graphic design. She hopes to design open source applications for analyzing biological data, as most programs currently available are proprietary.

Eva Tanaskoska, 22, Macedonia – Eva is an information security researcher at Zero Science Lab in Skopje, which studying computer science and engineering at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University. She is in the process of forming a CERT team at her university, where she mentors students on using Linux to perform penetration tests, forensic investigations and incident response. Eva hopes to one day focus full time on kernel development and Linux security research.

The Linux Foundation scholarships provide Linux training to developers and IT professionals who show interest and promise in becoming more active in and knowledgeable about Linux and open source development but cannot otherwise afford to attend a Linux Foundation training course. Each scholarship recipient will have the fees of one training course and one Linux Foundation certification exam covered for them.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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