DeepMind scholarships support the changing face of tech

DeepMind are funding new scholarships at Imperial to support diversity among the next generation of tech pioneers.

The renowned artificial intelligence group have funded four new scholarships for women or BAME postgraduate students in the Department of Computing, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

The scholarships, which cover tuition fees as well as a maintenance grant, are offered to exceptional home/UK students on various Master’s courses in the Department the academic year 2019/20.

World-leader

Imperial is a world-leader in Computer Science, with one of the largest computing departments in the UK. The Department is renowned for research and teaching spanning Logic and Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Software Engineering, Visual Information Processing, Quantitative Analysis and Decision Science and Programming Languages and Systems.

Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO, DeepMind, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Imperial to help broaden participation in computer science. I’d like to congratulate all of the recipients on this achievement and wish them the best in their future studies.”

Hannah Kay, a recipient of one of the scholarships, has just commenced an MSc in Computer Science, a course that provides intensive training in computer science for graduates of disciplines other than computing. 

Hannah had completed an undergraduate degree in psychology and begun a career in digital marketing before deciding to embark upon the Imperial course.

Hannah said: “I was looking for a career change and had tried coding out  before and really enjoyed it, so this course seemed like a natural fit for me. I really wanted to develop a skill that I could use to help improve the world we live in and I liked the idea of learning to develop innovative future technologies. 

“As a psychology graduate, I had always been fascinated by artificial intelligence, so having the opportunity to pursue this is really appealing.”

“Going back to study can be a difficult decision for many reasons, and finances are an obvious consideration. The course is intensive and so it’s even more important for me to be able to focus entirely on my studies. This scholarship allowed me to do that and I’d like to express my gratitude to DeepMind for this.”

Main image credit (circuit boad): archy13//Shutterstock