Today we announce an expansion of the Amazon Alexa Fellowship from 4 universities in 2017 to 18 universities in 2018, fueling the future of conversational AI research, education, and entrepreneurship. 

Students from around the world responded to our game skill challenge and brought their ideas for voice-enabled games to life by participating in the Build the Ultimate Game for Amazon Alexa contest.

With finals coming to an end and graduations happening for some, being a college student these past few weeks was no easy task. Nevertheless, students around the world brought their innovations to life by participating in our Hack-Your-World with Amazon Alexa contest. Check out the winners. 

We are happy to announce the Hack Your World with Amazon Alexa contest for university students. This is our second collaboration with MindSumo, a company that focuses on offering students first-hand experience with industry projects. 

When the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) launched in late 2015, developers began building engaging experiences for voice, ranging from simple to innovative. Today, an interdisciplinary team of students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) is pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve. Meet Audrey Higgins (writer), Mohammed Tauseef (AWS and Unity integration), Na-Yeon Kim (2D/3D artist), Longyi Cheng (Unity Gameplay programmer), and Shuang You (3D artist).

Their class assignment: build a prototype, in two weeks, of a fully immersive virtual world. Specifically, the team created A.L.Ex.A. (The Assistant Linked Extemporization Array), a VR experience that follows a talkative repair drone destined to help users (or “guests” as they’re known in the VR world) stranded on remote system Planet 532.

Voice technology carries enormous promise, as many people know from their interactions with Alexa, the voice service that powers devices like Amazon Echo. Our teams here at Amazon are working hard to unlock that potential, but innovation requires a collective effort, from large companies like ours to two-person startups, and from casual hobbyists to major academic institutions.

Today, we’re excited to announce the Alexa Fund Fellowship, a new program to support universities and researchers focused on transformative voice technologies such as text-to-speech (TTS), natural language understanding (NLU), automatic speech recognition (ASR) and conversational artificial intelligence (AI).

Alexa Fund Fellows will receive funding, access to Alexa devices, and mentoring from an Alexa Science team member to develop an undergraduate or graduate curriculum around one or more of these disciplines. The year-long program culminates in a demo day where students can showcase their work for peers, university faculty and members of the Alexa team.

We’re also pleased to announce our first group of university participants: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Johns Hopkins University, University of Southern California (USC), and University of Waterloo. Both Carnegie Mellon and Waterloo have already chosen fellows and begun offering classes for engineering students, while courses from Johns Hopkins and USC will begin in fall 2017.

Being a college student is a juggling act. That’s why the inaugural Hack-the-Dorm with Amazon Alexa contest, in collaboration with MindSumo, challenged students to build a new voice controlled Alexa skill to help make life easier and better on campus. A big thank you to the teams of students who submitted their creative and useful skills for the dorm using the Alexa Skills Kit.

The winners are ... 

With Amazon Alexa, developers are creating novel and delightful voice experiences for customers. University students are rethinking the way we live. Meet Adam Betemedhin, an Electrical Engineering major, and Kevin Duong-Tran, a Computer Science major, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Adam and Kevin, along with roughly 20 other students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds at UNLV, are participating in the 2017 Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that will culminate in October of this year. [Read More]

We are happy to announce the Amazon Alexa Hack the Dorm Contest for university students. This is our first challenge in collaboration with MindSumo, a company that focuses on giving students first-hand experience with industry projects.

As voice technology becomes ubiquitous around us, new and current developers are quickly learning about voice user interfaces (VUI). As a student, you are well positioned to create intuitive ways for people to interact with technology and can make a big impact on the interfaces of tomorrow. This contest is your chance to show customers on millions of Alexa-enabled devices what you can build using the Alexa Skills Kit.

To win, you will build a new voice-activated Alexa skill for your university dorm. The winners will create a new skill that makes life easier and better in a university dorm. From improving accessibility features, to creating integrations with your entertainment system, or even making homework more efficient, all domains and interests will be considered. Entries will be judged on their usefulness and creativity among a few other criteria. The best part; no hardware is necessary to do this. If you do not have an Alexa-enabled device, you can test your skill with Alexa right in your browser and begin building your skill right away. See the full contest rules here.

Here is what you can win:

• First place: $1,000 and an Amazon Echo.
• Second place: $300 and an Amazon Tap.
• Third place: $300 and an All-New Echo Dot (2^nd Generation).
• The first 10 submissions to publish their skills and submit a contest entry here and who are not selected as first, second or third place winners will receive an Amazon Tap.
• Everyone who publishes a skill is eligible for a limited edition Alexa Developer hoodie.

The contest begins today and will close on December 31^st at 11:59:59 PM PST. Winners will be announced on or around January 31^st, 2017.

Get started here. We can’t wait to see what you build.

Restrictions may apply, see the contest rules on MindSumo’s page.

About the Alexa Skills Kit

The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) enables developers to easily build capabilities, called skills, for Alexa. ASK includes self-service APIs, documentation, templates, and code samples to get developers on a rapid road to publishing their Alexa skills.