AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Education

Personalizing studying with machine learning: Course Hero’s approach

Different students learn in different ways. While many traditional classrooms continue to rely on a one-size-fits-all approach, Course Hero delivers personalized learning to every student through its innovative, machine learning (ML)-powered online platform. Operating under the slogan “Master your Classes,” Course Hero was founded with the vision of a world where every student graduates confident and prepared. The platform provides students access to study materials, including study guides, class notes, and practice problems. The service also includes on-demand access to subject matter expert tutors, available to help students 24/7.

Proteins wiggling and jiggling: The University of Nottingham’s Crossbow project paves a new path for biomolecular research using high-performance computing (HPC) and the cloud

The University of Nottingham has a history dating back to 1881, and while the university is now global with campuses in China and Malaysia, its flagship campus remains in the UK. Today, the university’s research efforts span nearly every discipline. One current project is Crossbow, a new, open source software project conceived and developed by Dr. Christian Suess, a research fellow at The University of Nottingham in conjunction with principal investigator Prof. Charlie Laughton, professor of computational pharmaceutical science. Crossbow is based out of the school of pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, where there is a particular interest in researching the design of new medicines using computer simulations of drugs and proteins.

Embracing the cloud for climate research

Scientists at NC State University’s North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS) work with large datasets and complex computational analysis. Traditionally, they did their work using on-premises computational resources. As different projects were stretching the limits of those systems, NCICS decided to explore cloud computing. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, we invited Jessica Mathews, Jared Rennie, and Tom Maycock to share what they learned from using AWS for climate research. As they considered exploring the cloud to support their work, the idea of leaving the comfort of the local environment was a bit scary. And they had questions: How much will it cost? What does it take to deploy processing to the cloud? Will it be faster? Will the results match what they were getting with their own systems? Here is their story and what they learned.

AWS EdStart Goes to South America to Bring Resources to EdTechs

Today, at the AWS São Paulo Summit, we announced that AWS EdStart, the AWS educational technology (EdTech) startup accelerator that helps startup EdTech companies build teaching and learning solutions on the AWS Cloud, is now available to customers in Brazil. Brazil is the first country in Latin America and second in the Western Hemisphere to offer the AWS EdTech-focused program to customers.

Alexa Announcements at ISTE 2019

This week, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team is at the 2019 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ISTE supports educators as they rethink the status quo and use technology to drive good practice. At the event, ACT, Frontline Education, and Kahoot! are rolling out Alexa Skills that make it possible for customers to engage with their products through Alexa.

Earth Science Information Partners: Promoting innovation for Earth science data

The Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a US-based nonprofit organization funded by NASA, NOAA, and the USGS. ESIP is playing a critical role in facilitating collaborative efforts to improve the collection, stewardship, and use of Earth science data and information. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, we invited Dr. Annie Burgess, ESIP Lab Director, to share the story of how ESIP is advancing knowledge of Earth-system science.

University of Nicosia in Cyprus turns to the cloud to better serve its students

The University of Nicosia (UNIC) is the largest university in Cyprus, and it is located in Nicosia, the capital. UNIC is a global university with more than 12,000 students from over 70 countries. Beyond Nicosia, UNIC has a presence in 18 additional cities across the globe. It’s the largest university in southern Europe that teaches primarily in English. To better serve its students, UNIC turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for reliability, cost savings, and innovation.