You will also need an account at github.com.
Basic GitHub accounts are free. Please consider what personal information you’d like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.
I personally prefer to use a non-institutional email for registering accounts to platforms I want smooth access to regardless of affiliation. However, there are advantages associated with affiliation with an academic institution on GitHub, namely that you get a free developer (PRO) account. The most important benefit of that is that it gives you unlimited public AND private repositories. You can however add your academic email as a secondary email which will allow you to benefit from this academic research discount. You can also just use your academic address from the start and just change it once you move on. Find out more about claiming an academic discount.