Holberton announced the appointment of a new Machine Learning and Mathematics Team to build out a comprehensive program to accelerate training students in the key tenets of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the engine of the New Economy. 

On LinkedIn, there are currently 60,000 machine learning jobs open in the U.S. alone. Many are technology giants such as Twitter and TikTok. But increasingly traditional tech companies are investing in machine learning and recruiting machine learning engineers: even companies like McDonald's. According to LinkedIn, machine learning has created one of the biggest employment opportunities of 2021. Machine learning hiring since 2019 is up by 32%.

"Machine learning has revolutionized so many fields, ranging from medicine, to social media, to food, to security," said Julien Barbier, CEO of Holberton. "This trend has accelerated with COVID-19. While yesterday, every company had to become a digital company to survive, tomorrow they will have to become machine learning companies. We're committed to training the next generation of ML software engineers to meet this demand when there is an urgent global shortage of qualified talent."

Holberton provides a portfolio of programs and tools, such as the new Mathematics and ML offerings, that customers can pick and choose among to make their teachers and students successful. Holberton's offering includes a complete off-the-shelf franchise model, as well as tailored curricula, auto-graded projects, tools and methods. Customers -- who best understand their student needs, job market requirements, and unique accessibility challenges -- use what they want or need to fulfill their education mission. Today Holberton customers - a network of 18 campuses on three continents and growing rapidly -- include franchise campuses, education providers like Pearson, and universities like Honoris United Universities. By unbundling its historical offerings, Holberton has created a new concept that it calls the "OS of Education''. 

"While many alternative educational institutions, both online and offline, have done a great job at opening the doors to programming, 99% of machine learning hires have a bachelor's degree or higher," said Mohamed Amine Ben Amor, PhD, leader of the new Holberton Mathematics and Machine Learning Team and former director of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Paris Dauphine of Tunis. "The field of machine learning is still not accessible to most aspirants, and it suffers from a huge lack of diversity that has already sparked many ethical controversies. The machine-learning community needs more diversity in the field. They are creating our future and we want that future to reflect the values and attitudes of everyone."

Reporting to Ben Amor, will be new team members Florian Bolgar, Fares Nadjar, Myriam Azzouz and Oumaima Merhbene, all ML experts from industry and academia. Oleksandra Fedorova from Google and Greggory Renard from xBrain and The Frontier Development Lab (an applied research accelerator based at NASA ARC and the SETI Institute), will serve as working advisors to ensure the curriculum is of the highest quality and meets industry needs.