The Linux Foundation Announces 2016 LiFT Scholarship Recipients

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - August 17, 2016) - The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, has announced the recipients of its 2016 Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) Scholarships. LiFT provides advanced open source training to existing and aspiring IT professionals from around the world.

This is the sixth year The Linux Foundation has awarded training scholarships. Forty-eight scholarships worth more than $130,000 have been awarded to date to current and aspiring IT professionals who may not otherwise be able to afford specialized training. Scholarship recipients may choose from any Linux Foundation training course and certification exam.

This year, The Linux Foundation received more than 1,000 applications for 14 scholarships. The most popular category once again was SysAdmin Super Star, followed by Linux Newbies and Academic Aces. Applications were received from six continents from applicants ranging in age from 13 to 66, demonstrating the demand for quality open source education across geographies and demographics.

"We hear countless stories from passionate, creative, innovative individuals around the world who want to contribute to open source and their societies," said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. "Providing scholarships for advanced training helps those individuals who directly benefit from it to then contribute to existing open source projects and even start new ones, as well as pass their knowledge along to their communities. We hope these scholarships serve as a catalyst for helping open source continue to grow and thrive."

Scholarship recipients for 2016 across each category are:

Academic Aces
Ahmed Alkabary, 23, Canada
Ahmed is a recent graduate of the University of Regina, where he earned degrees in computer science and mathematics. He began using Linux in the second year of his studies and quickly developed such a passion for it that he began extra studies outside of university to advance his skills. Ahmed's enthusiasm for Linux even led him to develop a free course on Udemy to teach it to others; nearly 50,000 students have enrolled to date. Now that he has finished his studies, Ahmed hopes to secure a job as a Linux system administrator.