Udacity is an online education company that offers courses accessible to interested people around the world. The company is the brainchild of German scientist Sebastian Thrun, an autonomous driving pioneer who won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 and initiated Google’s self-driving car unit. Udacity’s mission is to democratize education through its sophisticated fee-based Nanodegree programs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning as well as web and mobile development. It was only a question of time until Udacity would also put a focus on driverless cars – and this is where David Silver came into play.

Silver, a Princeton computer scientist with a Stanford MBA, smiles a lot when he talks about his passion for driverless cars. “They are going to change the world in ways we can’t even imagine,” he says, “I’m really excited to see how it makes the world a better place.” Embracing typical Silicon Valley values, Silver shows a deep-seated belief in technological progress combined with a hands-on mentality: if you want to change the world, just do it! Having worked in various software and consulting jobs, he started enrolling in free online courses at Udacity in 2015. “There were courses related to automotive topics or robotics, but no specific one on self-driving cars yet. It was all kind of a mishmash, not very well organized,” says Silver. He started writing about his experiences in his blog. Then, one day, Silver received a mail from Sebastian Thrun. “He said: Why don’t you come over to Udacity and put together a course on autonomous vehicles that helps people get hired into the industry?”

A “FLYER” THAT TURNED INTO A HIT

According to Silver, the Nanodegree program started as what he refers to as a “flyer”. “We just wanted to see if there is interest in this.” When the course was launched in October 2016, the response was overwhelming: more than 15,000 people applied for just 250 slots. Udacity quickly increased the size of the cohort to 500 students, with a new one starting every month. “Our goal is to democratize education so we want to teach as many people as possible,” says Silver.

Can anyone now become a self-driving car engineer? Well, in theory yes. “We don’t require our students to have a university degree – but many of our students have master’s degrees, PhDs or are even professors,” says Silver. Degree or not, there are several prerequisites that applicants need to fulfill: this includes an intermediate programming ability as well as basic knowledge in physics, algebra and calculus. Many students therefore come from technical fields like computer science, automotive or electric engineering. However, all career changers also get a chance: “The other day I read a review from an accountant who is taking the program. He said it’s tough, but he’s enjoying it,” says Silver laughing.