UC Berkeley Professor Receives Award For Founding Nonprofit

BERKELEY, CA — A University of California, Berkeley professor has been recognized for founding and developing a nonprofit organization that teaches computer programming to underserved students from Ethiopia.

UC Berkeley Professor Jelani Nelson was awarded the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions Within Computer Science and Informatics for founding and developing AddisCoder, a nonprofit organization which teaches programming to underserved students from all over Ethiopia.

AddisCoder has led many students to higher education and successful careers, a news release from the Eugene L. Lawler Awards announcing the award said.

"In 2011, Nelson founded AddisCoder to provide a free intensive summer program for high school students in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia," the news release said. "The program has shown exemplary efficacy in fostering the academic and professional development of over 500 high school students. AddisCoder’s student body is 40% female and includes students from each of the 11 regions in Ethiopia, students from ethnic minorities, and students living in poverty."

According to the Eugene L. Lawler Awards website, upon joining the program, many of the participating students have "little or no background" in programming or algorithms but in just "four short weeks, the students gain significant knowledge."

"The program rigorously covers college-level material in algorithms such as binary search and sorting, dynamic programming, and graph exploration," the Lawler website said. "Alumni have matriculated in programs at universities including Harvard, MIT, and Princeton, and some students have joined well-known companies such as Google."

Nelson has not only been an AddisCoder instructor himself, but he has recruited a large team of teachers and raised money from government, industry, and academic institutions to fund the initiative.

Nelson recently expanded the program to Jamaica.

To learn more about AddisCoder, click here.