Amazon is supporting research into conversational AI with Alexa fellowships

Amazon has chosen recipients from all over the world to be awarded the Alexa fellowships. The Alexa Fellowships program is open for PhD and post-doctoral students specializing in conversational AI at select universities. The program was launched last year, when four researchers won awards.

Amazon's Alexa Graduate fellowship

The Alexa Graduate Fellowship supports conversational AI research by providing funds and mentorship to PhD and postdoctoral students. Faculty Advisors and Alexa Graduate Fellows will also teach conversational AI to undergraduate and graduate students using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Services (AVS). The graduate fellowship recipients are selected based on their research interests, planned coursework and existing conversational AI curriculum. This year the institutions include six in the United States, two in the United Kingdom, one in Canada and one in India.

The 10 universities are:

• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India
• Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
• MIT App Inventor, Boston, MA
• University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
• University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
• University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
• University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
• University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Amazon's Alexa Innovation Fellowship

The Alexa Innovation Fellowship is dedicated to innovations in conversational AI. The program was introduced this year and Amazon has partnered with university entrepreneurship centers to help student-led startups build their innovative conversational interfaces. The fellowship also provides resources to faculty members. This year ten leading entrepreneurship center faculty members were selected as the inaugural class of Alexa Innovation Fellows. They are invited to learn from the Alexa team and network with successful Alexa Fund entrepreneurs. Instructors will receive funding, Alexa devices, hardware kits and regular training, as well as introductions to successful Alexa Fund-backed entrepreneurs.

The 10 universities selected to receive the 2018-2019 Alexa Innovation Fellowship include:

• Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
• California State University, Northridge, CA
• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
• Emerson College, Boston, MA
• Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
  University of California, Berkeley, CA
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
• University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

“We want to make it easier and more accessible for smart people outside of the company to get involved with conversational AI. That's why we launched the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Services (AVS) and allocated $200 million to promising startups innovating with voice via the Alexa Fund.” wrote Kevin Crews, Senior Product Manager for the Amazon Alexa Fellowship, in a blog post.

Read more about the 2018-2019 Alexa Fellowship class on the Amazon blog.


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