2024 Shubhra Kar LiFT Scholarship Recipients
Olufemi Emmanuel Ogidan, 26, Nigeria
Cloud Champion
Oleufemi is a cloud engineer who lately has been focused on using Kubernetes, Terraform and Prometheus to help him and his team achieve significant improvements in deployment efficiency, resource utilization and system reliability. As both a contributor and user, being a part of the open source community has helped him hone his technical skills while giving him a deep appreciation for the collaborative nature of open source development. With his scholarship, he plans to pursue his Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification.
Nooma Roohi, 32, Pakistan
Cybersecurity Defender
Nooma implements cybersecurity evaluations and controls. For her infrastructure work, she leverages open source GRC software for controls management. She uses CIS benchmarks, STIGs and vendor-specific security checklists for hardening network devices, domain controllers, member servers and other peripheral devices. To automate the implementation of controls on multiple devices, she uses Ansible for configuration and patch management and cybersecurity hardening of domain members, she employs a debloated and CIS-hardened bootable image. Once installed, this image has all the necessary controls already implemented. This distribution was developed and maintained by Nooma and has been successfully deployed in her organization for the past five years. For assessing in-house open source software applications, she uses open source projects such as those from the OWASP Foundation, Nmap, OpenVAS and MobSF vulnerability scanners and Python for exploit development. She plans to pursue her Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) certification with her scholarship.
Naing Naing Htun, 25, Thailand
Hyperledger Innovator
Naing Naing is a site reliability engineer currently working with Hyperledger Fabric to build a supply chain traceability system for farm produce, enabling shoppers to scan the barcode to learn about the producing farmer and their agricultural practices. He is also on another project team using Hyperledger Besu. One of the key benefits of participating in the open source community for Naing Naing is working with people around the world, helping him improve his communication skills. He is working to become a Hyperledger Fabric expert and plans to use his scholarship to pursue his Hyperledger Fabric Certified Practitioner (HFCP) certification.
Piyush Thange, 26, India
Linux Kernel Contributor
Piyush is a system software engineer who first learned about Linux and open source software in his first year in college. Since then, his passion for Linux and the Linux community has grown significantly. He is an avid open source community user and contributor across multiple projects, identifying issues, helping with documentation, posting reviews, and creating pull requests when he has a fix. He particularly enjoys interacting with some of the world's leader coders. Ultimately, though, his heart lies with the Linux kernel. He aspires to be a Linux kernel Subsystem Maintainer focusing on Memory Management Subsystems. Piyush plans to use his scholarship to further study Linux, focusing on device drivers.
Rida Hanif, 28, Pakistan
Networking Innovator
Rida is a technical lead software engineer. In her current role, she uses SONiC and is responsible for ensuring its reliable performance and scalability. She achieves this by collaborating with the SONiC community, including participating in code reviews and contributing new features and improvements. This hands-on involvement helps her grow her technical skills and enables her to stay up to date on the latest trends and advancements in networking technology. She plans to use her scholarship to help her earn her Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification.
Celal Yüksel, 25, Turkey
Node.js Innovator
Celal is a front-end developer whose current career goal is to transition to a full-stack developer role and complement that with DevOps skills. He believes the combination of skills will help him better streamline workflows and improve the reliability and scalability of the applications he develops. Currently, his work is focused on creating responsive and visually appealing themes and landing pages that cater to his organization's marketing needs, directly impacting user engagement and conversion rates. The use of React and Next.js enables him to develop highly interactive and user-friendly websites that perform well across all devices and platforms. He plans to use his scholarship to deepen his Node.js expertise.
Nouman Khan, 42, Pakistan
Open Source College/University Professor/Researcher
Nouman, an assistant professor, is an open source advocate actively engaged in the open source community as well as teaching the importance and value of open source to his students. Open source also plays a key role in his academic research, including publishing his findings in open access journals, contributing to open source projects, and collaborating with other researchers from diverse backgrounds. He plans to use his scholarship to continue to further study Linux and Kubernetes so he can better help his students launch their open source careers.
Dedeepya Avancha, 19, India
Open Source Girl
Dedeepya started her open source career journey by teaching herself about Arduino as a 10th grader. This initial experience led her to decide to pursue a career in open source. While her long-term career goals center on IoT and robotics, she plans to use her scholarship to learn more about Kubernetes and earn her Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) certification. One of 14 girls in a class of 210 students, she believes earning certifications is a way to show her peers she can excel in open source technology and help inspire the girls that may come after her by showing them there is a place in tech for them to thrive and lead.
Bhuvan M, 19, India
Open Source Newbie
As a college student whose studies are focused on computer engineering and machine learning his entry into open source began with Hugging Face. He is very interested in helping the world, himself included, understand what is actually going on inside of deep learning and is currently learning about and working with TensorFlow and Hugging Face Transformers. He says that HF Transformers has had a major impact on his work and studies, which has inspired him to want to contribute to the Hugging Face community. He plans to use his scholarship to further his Pytorch studies.
Anthony Patton, 17, USA
Open Source Tech Teen
Anthony taught himself the basics of Linux before teaching himself tools such as CeWL and Nmap. He is very interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity and hopes to become a Red Teamer/Penetration Tester with a focus on defending against database and network incursions. He plans to use his scholarship to expand his cloud native knowledge and skills and hopes to earn his Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA) certification.
Chrispine Mwalela Mwawana, 27, Kenya
Open Source Volunteer Developer
Chrispine is a full-time developer who volunteers with a Kenyan organization working to drive innovation in the agriculture and aquaculture industries by bringing digital technology training and opportunities to rural and poor urban youth. He believes that by acquiring new skills, specializing in key areas, leading impactful projects, mentoring others, and advocating for open source, he can make more meaningful contributions. He hopes his efforts will benefit both his local community and the global open source community. Chrispine intends to use his scholarship to pursue additional cloud native and Kubernetes training and to earn his Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification.
Temuulen Tuguldur, 28, Mongolia
Public/Government Open Source Innovator
A lead data scientist, Temuulen also volunteers with the Mongolian Data Club. During her seven years in her current role, she has helped deliver significant improvements in the quality and speed of data collection and analysis related to education in Mongolia. While she is currently exploring AI with a focus on ethical AI deployment, she plans to use her scholarship to build her Linux and cloud native skills, which she sees as pivotal to advancing her data science and AI career.
Misbah Ishaq, 23, Pakistan
RISC-V innovator
Misbah is a RISC-V system on chip design and verification engineer who works hands-on developing and optimizing software for RISC-V based platforms. Her team's recent achievements include improving the superscalar RF AI RISC-V processor architecture to accelerate AI workloads, enhance productivity and enable innovative applications across diverse domains. She is continuing to build her RISC-V knowledge and skills with self-study focused on computer architecture, instruction set design and hardware/software co-design. She plans to use her scholarship to earn her RISC-V Foundational Associate (RVFA) certification.
Pyae Phyoe Thein, 35, Myanmar
SysAdmin Super Star
Pyae is a systems administrator who is an active contributor in the open source community and enjoys spending his free time fixing bugs and improving documentation. He is planning to use his scholarship to expand his skills and knowledge related to Kubernetes to help grow his career in the direction of DevOps and cloud engineering.
Fernando Ivan Antonio Hernandez Diaz, 41, Mexico
Unemployed Open Source Professional
Fernando has been an IT professional for more than 11 years, most recently as an integration engineer. To date , his career has focused on cloud computing for telecommunications, but as he explores new directions for his IT career,he has become very interested in embedded systems. Currently, he is taking a refresher course on Linux and plans to use his scholarship to earn his Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification.
Nwazojie Chinwendu, 24, Nigeria
Woman in Open Source
In addition to working in IT, Nwazojie is a chapter leader of Open Source Community Africa in Nigeria. It was through an Open Source Community Africa event she attended in 2019 that she first learned about open source. She plans to use her scholarship to further her professional development in the areas of cloud native technologies and DevOps. Nwazojie will then use her new knowledge and skills to help give other women the confidence to pursue a career in open source technology through training and mentoring.