The post Amazon expands its Alexa Fund Fellowship to a total of 18 universities, up from 4 last year appeared first on BardTech . Amazon announced this morning a further investment in voice technology with an expansion of its Alexa Fund Fellowship to 14 new universities, up from only 4 in 2017, the Fellowship’s first year. The program, which is designed to support conversational A.I. and speech science research, is now coming to 18 total universities, including new additions, MIT, Dartmouth and Cambridge. Under the banner of the Alexa Fund Fellowship are two programs: The Alexa Graduate Fellowship, focused on fostering education by PhD and post-doctoral students on topics like machine learning, speech science, and conversational A.I.; as well as the Alexa Innovation Fellowship, which is aimed at helping entrepreneurship center faculty serve as voice experts on campus, Amazon says. Only 10 of the universities are receiving the 2018-19 Graduate Fellowship – a decision that’s made b...