From kicking off your day, to wrapping up at night, Alexa was fully integrated into the living space of the Smart Life airstream that Texas A&M University students lined up to tour on Oct. 9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnered with the College of Engineering and the college’s information technology (IT) division to bring two unique opportunities to campus; the first, an open opportunity for students to check out the Smart Life Roadshow, a traveling showcase of the newest and most innovative smart tech products, and the second was a chance to hack an Amazon DeepLens in order to explore the facial recognition features.
“[IT] wanted to bring a fun event for the students to learn some new technology that Amazon is releasing,” said Michael Leary, associate director of information technology. “Datapalooza introduced the same technology that runs Alexa to students in an instructor-led scenario with the DeepLens.”
This opportunity for students to engage with AWS is part of an ongoing strategy where IT turns traditional vendors into technology partners, adding more value to engineering students’ educational experience through these exclusive events.
“AWS has been a great partner,” said Leary. “The more we do with them from a business standpoint, the more they come forward with opportunities like this, introducing new technology to our engineering students. So far, this strategy has been successful.”
While a four-hour workshop heavy on coding and technology seems daunting to most, students lined the hall of the Zachry Engineering Education Complex to ensure their spot when check-in first began. As students dove deeper into the technology exploration part of the workshop, mentors from AWS rounded the room to guide the participants through the activities.
“Coding and programming are things that I very much enjoy,” said Clay Ozuna '18, an electrical engineering student. “This is a new field and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to see what else is out there.
“Essentially, we built a model on the AWS website and pushed it onto the DeepLens device. We built a face recognition model that’s able to measure how confidently it’s reading a person’s face. There’s so much more that goes on in deep learning than I thought. It’s just crazy to think about how much out there I don’t know about yet,” Ozuna said.
Faculty and students can leverage AWS Educate, part of the Texas A&M institutional membership. This gives students access to annual credits to work on projects, online curriculum, gain micro-credentials and complete paths that will land them on Amazon’s job boards based on the skills they have crafted in these pathways. From courses and certifications for newbies, all the way to technical training, these services are available for all Texas A&M students.