My goal is to seek to empower as many people as I can through technology. And really try to be as ethical and responsible as I can be as an engineer. My name is Gedeon Baende and I'm an AWS AI and ML Scholarship student, and I'm studying integrated engineering at the University of San Diego. (gentle ethereal music) (waves crashing) Hello. Hi. Vaṇakkam. I'm from Himachal Pradesh, India. I'm interested in artificial intelligence. If they can do it, then I can do it too. (waves crashing) (gentle music) [Gedeon] I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Kinshasa. When I was 13 years old, my parents made the difficult decision to send my siblings and I to live with my aunt in the US in search of a better education. One thing led to the other and then bam, just like that, we're in Utah. Now I didn't know any English. All of a sudden, I'm here where I can't speak to anyone. I can't understand what they're saying. And I have to go and learn the language as fast as I can and then figure out a way to fit in. (gentle serene music) My aunt was always pushing us. I mean, she did a really good job by making sure that we were doing very well in school. That really helped me grow into a more confident version of myself. Really helping me see that I was capable of achieving whatever it was I put my mind to. I'm really driven to giving back to my family for all their sacrifice over the years for me to be able to get to where I am today. (gentle serene music) My intro to computer science, it was brutal, if I'm being honest. (elevator door dinging) I started having doubts and thinking that I wasn't as bright as some of the other students. But I actually wanted to code. I see artificial intelligence being part of society in so many ways. That's when I discovered the AWS AI and ML Scholarship program. That exposure to the course and everything I learned, especially for neural networks. I was able to directly apply it to my capstone project. (indistinct murmuring) (gentle lilting music) We've estimated that by 2030, 60 million EV batteries are gonna end up in the landfills. That's a lot of unused energy that's going to waste. Our project aims to use software that non-invasively diagnoses the EV batteries, and provides potential use cases for second-life applications. Such as appliances or for energy storage. We wanna make use of all of that untapped potential. I believe in everything happening for a reason in life. People in my country are impacted by things that are done unethically. And that taught me to value everyone around me and not take my community for granted. Now, I'm on the other side doing work to improve my community and hopefully the rest of the world.
