When she joined the University of Technology in Valence (France) to study computer science, Audrey Roumieux was part of a first-year promotion of 84 students. Six of them were women. “We had no problem finding each other,” she recalls with a laugh. “In the class of 84 people, I was one of the first people to be spotted. Apart from an occasional joke in poor taste from her male classmates, she thrived in college. “I don’t really see why there are so few women in IT because I’m just as capable as a man of doing my job. »
Audrey then completed another year of university in Marseille, then an internship at a cancer research center that was developing machine learning models to detect cancer cells. Technology fascinates her. This one is statistically better at the task than the doctors. “It was like magic, and I wanted so much to know what was behind it,” she says. “I wanted to continue my studies, and that’s when I discovered the IA Microsoft school by Simplon. Audrey was part of the first class of the school, which opened in 2018 to help women, refugees, people with disabilities and people in transition to enter the world of AI. She is now a data engineer at Avanadea company created by Microsoft and Accenture in a joint venture in 2000.
The Microsoft IA school by Simplon is part of the initiatives de Microsoft to bring more diversity into the digital world and to close the important labor and gender gaps. A 2021 report by the European Commission estimates that Europe will need 20 million information and communication technology (ICT) specialists by 2030. Currently, 8.4 million specialists of ICT work in the European Union, of which 81.5% are men. Microsoft has partnered with Simplon, a social enterprise specializing in digital training for job seekers from diverse backgrounds. Simplon is established in France, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Jordan and India. The Simplon schools have trained more than 25,000 people, of whom approximately 40% are women and 44% of the learners did not have a university degree at the time of entering the training.
Pôle Emploi is the main intermediary for new trainees in the IA program (as well as other digital training programs at Simplon in France). Interested and potential job seekers are encouraged to enroll in the program, and the French government covers a large part of the tuition fees.
Louise Joly is administrator of the AI program at Simplon, which turns five in March. There are now 50 Microsoft by Simplon AI schools in France, which have trained more than 900 people, around 29% of whom are women. According to Louise, Simplon has long wanted to achieve gender parity in its classrooms, but a variety of barriers hold women back and have made it difficult to achieve this goal. “At Simplon, we are less concerned with the reasons for this glass ceiling than with finding a solution,” she says. That’s why Simplon created a pre-qualification course for women in the RN program, which Louise says resulted in a higher pass rate.
For Louise, the active pedagogy implemented in the training is the reason for the school’s success in bringing learners into sustainable employment. AI training learners spend four months in the classroom, seven hours a day. Then they spend a year learning in a company, with one week in class and three weeks in the company. Simplon works with companies to create and continually improve the training program. Companies select apprenticeship candidates offered by Simplon at the start of the training program. In this way, Simplon supports companies in a non-traditional recruitment process – by offering atypical profiles that do not meet the usual standards such as level of diploma, professional background and previous experience.
Laurent Cetinsoy is a professor at the IA Microsoft by Simplon school in Paris, and he is an advocate of the school’s hands-on approach. “The idea is that if you want to learn tennis, the best way is not to hear an old man talk regarding tennis for three hours,” he says. “We try to get the student into action as soon as possible, but that doesn’t mean I don’t explain things. »
Even during the intensive part of the learning, says Laurent, the participants are working on real projects. In the first year of the program, he says, the class helped an inventor improve a machine that immediately recycles plastic to use it in a connected 3D printer to create new objects. Students used AI to train the machine to recognize and sort plastic by type. “We were lucky enough to have Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) visit the school at that time, and he really liked the project,” he says.
Stan Briand graduated from the school in February 2022 following a year spent apprenticed at LACROIX at reindeer. There, he developed a system using AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) to help detect leaks in the city of Nevers’ water system. “On average, in France, pipelines leak from 22 to 25%, from so that regarding a quarter of the drinking water we produce ends up in nature,” Stan explains. “This is due to multiple factors, but the most important is that the pipelines are getting old and it costs a lot of money to restore them. »
The system Stan developed takes data from 200 sensors that detect water flow in the Nevers water network and uses an AI algorithm to analyze it. AI helps pinpoint where leaks are most likely to be found. Careful review of this data took well over an hour a day for a water utility worker. According to Stan, this task now takes five minutes and frees up time for other critical maintenance.
“France, like many other countries, has problems with drought,” which makes water resources more precious, says Stan. “It’s a step towards solving these kinds of problems, so it’s really gratifying. The system he created is now being used in a municipal water system and will be rolled out to others.
Reynholds Reinette is Stan’s supervisor at LACROIX. During his year-long apprenticeship, Stan applied his technical skills and demonstrated initiative in developing the water anomaly detection system, says Reynholds, the decision to hire him was easy to make. “The project was great and we wanted to keep working on it,” says Reinette. LACROIX recently hired another graduate from the IA Microsoft by Simplon school in Rennes and another learner from the school is expected in the spring.
Before training as an AI specialist, Stan taught English in Chengdu, China, and eventually became a national-level administrator for a group of English-language schools. He computerized the administration system and became fascinated with what he might do with the data. Back in France, he decided to follow a training course to enter the world of computer programming.
“At that time, I felt that the AI field would require a lot of experience, a lot of math knowledge, and basically I thought it would be too hard for me to get into it,” recalls -he. “But the Microsoft by Simplon AI school doesn’t require a lot of math or even a master’s degree in technology. So, I applied, took some tests and got in. »
Laurent, the AI professor, echoes Stan, saying that the most important factors for the success of the program are motivation and the willingness to work really hard. “You need an analytical mind and an analytical view to solve problems,” he says. “Good programming skills are more important than being a math expert. »
Microsoft and Simplon have collaborated on another training program that just started in November 2022: a specialization in cybersecurity, another field where more competent workers are urgently needed in Europe and elsewhere. Over the past three months, high-profile cyberattacks on telecommunications networks in Portugal, government servers in Poland and oil facilities in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have highlighted the problem.
The Cybersecurity School is at the heart of Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Skills Plan in France, which aims to support the training of 10,000 new cybersecurity professionals by the end of 2025. Sixteen students from the first class of the program have completed their courses and begin a 16-month apprenticeship in seven different companies in France. After her period of intensive courses at the IA Microsoft school by Simplon, Audrey started her apprenticeship at Azeo (since acquired by Avanade), which turned into a permanent contract.
Audrey enjoys many things regarding her job, including the fact that her clients and their needs are diverse; She always learns something new. She worked on creating ways to analyze and visualize sales data for a large wine and spirits company. For an agency, she helped create a program to automatically send emails to clients who are chronically late in payment. She currently works organizing and visualizing data for a company that runs corporate cafeterias and distributes meal cards.
“For me, technology is a way to help people in their lives and in their businesses,” she says. This belief comes from personal experience, she says. “I’m dyslexic, and when I was little I was given a little computer to help me with spelling and grammar,” she says. She saw this computer as an ally and realized its potential to solve all kinds of problems. “Clearly, when someone gave me this little computer, it helped me a lot, and I thought to myself, this is a tool that helps people, and why not see if I might work with it to make the same for the others. »
Cover image: Audrey Roumieux, data engineer at Avanade in Paris and one of the first graduates of Microsoft AI School by Simplon. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.