Sebastian Thrun, an ex Stanford professor decided in January to give up his tenure at the school and reach out for larger audiences. Specializing in machine learning and robotics, Thrun is excited to leave the constraints of formal education and become a key player in a new online university called Udacity.

The professor believes in reaching the people who truly have an aptitude for his material rather than just those who have the financial means. His goal is to reach students all over the World. Also, the professor would like to cover a wider range of topics than he could offer at Stanford.

Udacity:

We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we’ve connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students in almost every country on Earth.

Starting on February 20th Udacity will begin online learning offering two classes:

CS 101: BUILDING A SEARCH ENGINE
Learn programming in seven weeks. We’ll teach you enough about computer science that you can build a web search engine like Google or Yahoo!

CS 373: PROGRAMMING A ROBOTIC CAR
In seven weeks you’ll learn how to program all the major systems of a robotic car, by the leader of Google and Stanford’s autonomous driving teams.