Apple in an announcement has said that it will grant USD 5 million to four historically black universities in an effort to expand their engineering programs responsible for designing electronic chips that fuels electronic devices. The use of electronic devices is growing exponentially and because of that the chip industry is growing very rapidly. There is a need of chip in every electronic gadget as it has the ability to store a lot of data on a single platform which is portable. Apple said that USD 5 million will be equally and entirely distributed across Alabama A&M University and the other universities such as Howard University situated in Washington DC, Morgan State University situated in Baltimore and Praire View A&M. The funds will be distributed to these universities over a span of three years.
The scholarship money comes from Apple’s broader racial justice initiative, announced last year with seed funding of USD 100 million. The scholarship grant will support the engineering departments of each school and seek to focus the expansion of the student work into areas such as computer architecture and chip design. Internships in hardware technologies will also be supported by scholarships, Apple said.
Apple custom designs many of the chips in its in house facility for its flagship devices, including the core processors in its Mac computers and iPhones and special chips in its AirPods earbuds that help them work seamlessly with other Apple devices. “We know that many jobs of the future will be in innovative areas like silicon, and we want to help ensure tomorrow’s leaders have access to transformative learning opportunities,” said Lisa Jackson in a statement who is Apple vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives.
