The University Engagement Program is an educational, outreach and mentorship initiative founded in 2021 by Alba Mustafaj and powered by volunteer efforts from Amazonians globally in partnership with Amazon Women in Engineering Community. The goal of the program is to empower university students, with a particular focus on young women and underrepresented individuals, by providing hands-on training in in-demand skills and offering mentorship opportunities to boost their preparedness for industry careers.
The program was piloted with the American University of Beirut and has since expanded in scope and reach. The current format consists of a 3-day Bootcamp in Software Engineering, Product Management and Machine Learning. The bootcamp is followed by a 8-week virtual Mentorship phase where students work on self-directed projects with guidance from experienced Amazonian mentors. At the end of the mentorship phase, there is an awards ceremony where a panel of judges evaluates the projects and announces the top 3 winners. These winning teams receive personalized career coaching sessions with experienced Amazonians, mock-interviews and GenAI scholarships.
The bootcamp this year was held on May 29-31 and the mentorship phase from June 17 to August 23. The closing ceremony for the 2024 cohort with Bilkent University was held on September 18. The ceremony kicked off with a program overview by the program lead, Alba Mustafaj, former Bilkent Graduate, Software Engineer & Bar Raiser at Amazon. It was moderated by ACM Bilkent students committee who welcomed on stage 15 innovative projects from Bilkenters and 2 Amazon Senior Leaders, Richa Parashar and Onur Ağın. Our esteemed jury consisted of:
Selim Aksoy – Chair & Professor @Department of Computer Engineering
Onur Ağın – Senior Software Development Manager @Amazon
Dmytro Kosmakov – Senior Software Engineer @Amazon
Adam Koscinski – Senior Software Engineer @Amazon
The ceremony concluded with the announcement of the top three places:
Laughing Llamas – Yusuf Kesmen, Yavuz Alp Sencer Öztürk, Eray Yapağcı
SkillSprint – Maher Athar Ilyas, Arshia Bakhshayesh
Codefolio – Zeynep Üçüncüoğlu, Fenari Köstem, Akif Yavuz, Boran Kılıçaslan, Torkan Hesari
There were two additional awards:
NutriTech (People’s Choice Award) – Alper Koçyiğit, Murat Akpek, Kaan Oğuzkan, Bora Balcı, Egemen Güler
Byte&Bite (Best Technical Solution Award) – Batu Uzun, Mehmet Enes Çakır, Emre Furkan Akyol
The winners will be enrolled on AWS & Udacity genAI scholarships in the upcoming two cohorts, receive further mentorship and 1:1 interview preparation.
Registrations for the next cohort will start in March 2025 and we encourage students to become part of the upcoming University Engagement Program and work with experienced Amazonians to build innovative projects and boost their preparedness for industry roles.
