A delivery robot from Amazon recently surprised a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology with a $40,000 scholarship and a paid internship offer at the technology company.
Sierra Frisbee will attend Harvard College in the fall, where she will pursue a degree in computer science. She will be eligible for the Amazon internship after her first year of college.
She is among 100 new recipients of the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship, chosen based on academic achievement, demonstrated leadership, participation in activities, work experience, goals and financial need, according to a news release from Gwinnett County Public Schools.
The Amazon Future Engineer program aims to inspire young people from underrepresented communities to pursue careers in computer science and coding.
“Sierra has been a wonderful student to watch grow,” Laura Gray, the teacher who nominated her for the scholarship, said in the news release. “She is enthusiastic, inquisitive, independent, and intelligent, but what stands out most of all is her unbridled passion to engineer ways to always be helping others. It is this passion that will help her change the world for the better.”
During a job shadow experience three years ago at IBM and The Weather Company, Frisbee wrote artificial intelligence programs using the Watson computer. She worked on robotics research projects for three summers as an intern at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory, according to the Gwinnett school district.
GSMST is a lottery-based accelerated science, technology, engineering and mathematics school. The U.S. Department of Education in 2016 named it a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence.
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