To meet the growing need for AI engineers, researchers and data scientists, educators have been gearing up on how to prepare their students for promising careers in AI and robotics.
To help with this effort, the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute delivers hands-on training and certification in AI at the edge. DLI offers free, self-paced courses online, including two AI certification tracks devoted to demonstrating understanding of the NVIDIA Jetson platform and AI.
- Jetson AI Specialist: This certification can be completed by anyone to demonstrate mastery of Jetson and AI concepts using a hands-on, project-based assessment. It’s ideal for learners who’d like to build on their knowledge of AI and for engineers who want to brush up their skills. Read about some of the inspiring AI specialists who’ve already been certified.
- Jetson AI Ambassador: This certification is for educators, leaders at robotics institutions and AI community organizers. It recognizes competency in teaching AI on Jetson using a project-based assessment, including an interview with the NVIDIA team. Jetson AI Ambassadors earn a certificate and receive many other benefits, including expense reimbursement up to $500 per approved event and consideration for free developer kits (up to five) through the Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit Grant program.
NVIDIA also offers free, open-source platforms and other curriculum for educators to customize their AI courses.
Introducing the First Class of Jetson AI Ambassadors
Here’s what the first class of certified Jetson AI Ambassadors had to say about their certification experience.
Paul DeCarlo, principal cloud advocate and manager for IoT Advocacy at Microsoft and adjunct professor at the University of Houston, USA, shared:
“Whether you are currently employed and want to learn new skills to share with your team or an educator looking to outfit students with experience in a bleeding-edge field to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow, the certification process will prepare you to demonstrate working AI solutions and challenge you to then exercise your newly gained capabilities to create an AI project of your own.”
“This certification is for anyone interested in familiarizing with the Jetson platform or wanting to work with applied AI, especially if you have the desire to share your learnings with others. This is great for anyone who wants to share with potential employers, existing colleagues or the world at large that they are versed in the special topics covered in the Jetson AI Fundamentals coursework.”
“Certification demonstrates that the learner has undergone a curated regimen of course material and proven their ability to apply the concepts contained within to a real-world project.”
David Tseng, founder of CAVEDU Education and visiting scientist at MIT CSAIL, Taiwan, shared:
“The Jetson AI Ambassador certificate allows me to use the NVIDIA resources methodically to be ready to teach AI to the local educator community.”
Since getting certified as an Jetson AI Ambassador, Tseng has held four AI workshops for high school and vocational school teachers at Taichung Municipal Taichung Girls’ Senior High School, Yongchun High School, and Banqiao High School and Luzhou JH in Taiwan.
Feedback from the attendees has been great: “Wow, AI is not that hard!”, “My robot is now the coolest than ever before!”, “Now I know how the self-driving car works.” Tseng added, “We can see more students implement various kinds of AI/DL features into their projects with the help of the NVIDIA resources. From the long-term perspective, this may encourage more students to major in computer science when they enter college.”
Khlaifia Bilel, assistant professor of artificial intelligence in the Aviation School of Borj Amri, Tunisia, shared:
“What an honor to be part of this great family of NVIDIA! Getting certified as an AI Ambassador helped me to improve my technical profile and now I am delivering workshops and teaching AI using the NVIDIA technologies.”
“I have been using the Jetson Nano Developer Kit for teaching for more than a year. Over 50 of my students are certified now on ‘Getting started with AI on Jetson Nano.’ Jetson is the greatest tool to teach and learn AI as it is the best choice for educational purposes when it comes to a limited budget while yet supported with powerful GPU computing resources.”
Carlos Rodriguez Muinos, associate professor of engineering at Universidad de Oviedo, Spain, shared:
“Certification gives credibility to any proposal presented at the Spanish Ministry of Education. The national education authorities are currently developing post-vocational formal education curricula for AI and Big Data.”
“I’m getting prepared to start a basic course with a group of 10 second-year students of automatics and industrial robotics. The aim of the project is to leverage the NVIDIA Jetson platform and JetBot kits so they can be used to impart the teaching of the curricula. The project will last from April to June and part of the project involves teaching the ‘Introduction to JetBot’ concepts.”
Ahmet Furkan Demir, computer engineering student at Necmettin Erbakan University, Turkey, shared:
“The certification motivated me, and I am now more enthusiastic in the field of AI and open to learning. I also plan to use the certificate in my business life.”
“I recently did a study with my community via Google Meet. I am planning to do another workshop on AI and Jetson because I received very positive feedback from my prior workshop. I strive to provide hands-on edge AI education by doing projects on Jetson.”
Demir also recommends that “those who wish to get certified as Jetson AI Ambassadors to use GitHub and LinkedIn actively, to share their projects with Jetson on these platforms. You should also be involved in your communities at the university and share your own knowledge.”
Mario Antonio Tovar Rosas, Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Renewable Energy of the National University of Mexico, shared:
“The NVIDIA DLI program has great material for entry-level beginners as well as advanced professionals in the AI business. In fact, I presented the first workshop based on NVIDIA AI technologies on March 29-31 at the National Congress of Renewable Energy of Mexico.”
“I want to use the Jetson platform for energy predictions, and I plan to implement a dynamic neural network in the Jetson Nano for smart energy usage. I also want to do workshops for students getting started with Jetson Nano, which is absolutely an amazing hands-on learning tool.”
“I can anticipate that in the future, little kids will be getting AI classes with the Jetson Nano!”
Francisco Manuel Castro Payán, professor and researcher at the University of Malaga, Spain, shared:
“This certification will boost your technical profiles by showing your understanding of Jetson and AI. AI and edge computing is growing a lot thanks to platforms like Jetson Nano.”
Castro Payán held a workshop on teaching with Jetson Nano in February and got positive feedback from the attendants. “It was my first workshop and the experience was great. Most of the attendees never used a Jetson Nano before so it was a good starting point to use Jetson in their projects. They learned how to deploy deep learning models on Jetson,” he said.
He recommends “Educators should use Jetson Nano in their classes to show real implementations in a project that their students can touch and interact with in real time. People should not focus just on the DLI Getting Started course because there are many interesting public projects that they can learn from and apply the knowledge to their own projects.”
Want to Be a Jetson AI Ambassador, Too?
Jetson AI Ambassadors are dedicated to furthering AI in education. To start teaching your students about AI to help them prepare for their future careers, consider becoming a Jetson AI Ambassador. Learn more here.
To learn more about Jetson for AI Education, join us at GTC, running April 12-16. Registration is free. And don’t miss the opening keynote address from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, on April 12 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time.