Meet the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2018 students working on NumFOCUS projects!
This is the second in a series of blogs to introduce our GSoC students to the community. Learn more about the GSoC program and our first group of students in the first blog post.
In this second post, we’re pleased to introduce students working on the following NumFOCUS Affiliated Projects:
Conda Forge, Data Retriever, Gensim, and MDAnalysis
Pranita Sharma
Data Retriever
Synchronize R API with the Python Data Retriever API and improve usability of R package
College/University: North Carolina State University
Major/Concentration: Computer Science
Degree Program: Masters
Hometown: Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
What motivated you to apply for GSoC with NumFOCUS?
Involvement with Open Source Community
Why did you choose your specific project topic?
I chose R API of Data Retriever because I can relate to the problems it solves for data analysts, as I have faced them myself during the tenure of my job.
How did you get involved in open source software?
It is my first time contributing to open source.
What are you expecting out of your GSoC experience?
Involvement in open source community and a great learning experience.
What are your career goals, and how do you see the GSoC program moving you towards them?
I wish to code in Python and R languages in future too and my GSoC project includes both!
Apoorva Pandey
Data Retriever
College/University: Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College
Major/Concentration: Computer Science and Engineering
Degree Program: Bachelors
Hometown: Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
How did you get involved in open source software?
I started open source contributions with Mozilla. I contributed to Mozilla’s addons-server.
Justin Calamari
conda-forge
College/University: Columbia University
Major/Concentration: Applied Physics/Computer Science
Degree Program: Bachelors
Hometown: Port Washington, New York, USA
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
What motivated you to apply for GSoC with NumFOCUS?
In February of 2018, I helped to create the conda-forge autotick bot, a bot which automatically updates packages on conda-forge with version updates from the source code. The bot is still a work in progress, so I submitted an application to GSoC with proposed fixes and enhancements to the bot.
Why did you choose your specific project topic?
I have been using Conda for several years to install software packages for programming projects. Conda-forge makes Conda an even better package manager since it makes it easy for users to package software and make it Conda installable. Keeping track of when new versions of software are released is super important so that conda-forge users have access to the most up-to-date packages. While it has traditionally been up to humans to keep track of versions, this job can reasonably be done by a machine, and I was interested in developing software that would make things easier for package maintainers and improve conda-forge.
How did you get involved in open source software?
The research group I was a member of releases a lot of software, much of which is open source. One of the members of the group was involved in conda-forge and encouraged me to contribute to the project.
What are you expecting out of your GSoC experience?
I hope to learn the best practices in contributing to open source and how to best communicate and work with people that I will not be able to meet with in person. I also hope to become a part of the conda-forge community and continue to contribute to the project in the future.
What are your career goals, and how do you see the GSoC program moving you towards them?
I hope to continue contributing the open source projects in the future, not limited to conda-forge. I hope that my participation in GSoC will help me to learn the best practices in contributing to open source and that my communication with the conda-forge community will introduce me to other open source projects I would be interested in contributing to.
Aneesh Joshi
Gensim
College/University: Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal
Major/Concentration: Computer Science and Engineering
Degree Program: Bachelors
Hometown: Pune, Maharashtra, India
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
What motivated you to apply for GSoC with NumFOCUS?
Merging a difficult PR into Henson resulted in me learning a lot. GSOC felt like the best fit for learning even more.
Why did you choose your specific project topic?
I chose gensim because I had previously used it professionally in an internship and felt that it was a great tool for engineers and researchers.
How did you get involved in open source software?
I made my first PR to gensim with a simple link fix in a docs page almost a year ago. Since then, I’ve learnt a lot and even merged a PR with a minor feature.
What are you expecting out of your GSoC experience?
I’m expecting to make a useful tool and write some great code.
What are your career goals, and how do you see the GSoC program moving you towards them?
I want to be a good devleoper who builds things. GSOC will help me learn in this direction.
Davide Ribeiro da Cruz
MDAnalysis
College/University: ITQB-NOVA
Major/Concentration: Molecular Modelling
Degree Program: Graduate
Hometown: Oeiras, Lisbon, Portugal
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
What motivated you to apply for GSoC with NumFOCUS?
As a researcher in the field of molecular modelling and computational biophysics, I understand that having the right tools to analyze and present your data is crucial. I want to help create those tools
Why did you choose your specific project topic?
MDAnalysis provides an API that contains a lot of tools that are used by scientists in my field, and it makes the workflow a lot more efficient and streamlined. By implementing on-the-fly trajectory transformations, I’ll be helping expand the functionality of this API even more.
How did you get involved in open source software?
This is my first time contributing to open source. A colleague of mine, who’s a contributor of MDAnalysis, asked me if I would be interested and here I am.
What are you expecting out of your GSoC experience?
I’m expecting to learn a lot about programming in a development project of this size, and expand my network of people working in the same field as me.
What are your career goals, and how do you see the GSoC program moving you towards them?
As I approach the end of my PhD project, I’m looking to improve my skills in software development in the context of scientific research, and teamwork. I see the GSoC as a great opportunity to work on those skills.
Ayush Suhane
MDAnalysis
College/University: University of British Columbia
Major/Concentration: Materials Engineering
Degree Program: Masters
Hometown: Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
How many times have you participated in Google Summer of Code? This is my first time participating in GSoC
What motivated you to apply for GSoC with NumFOCUS?
Typically, projects in NumFOCUS are directly related and relevant to the various projects going on in Academia.
Why did you choose your specific project topic?
With some background in Molecular Dynamics, I was looking for avenues to contribute in the open source community as well as learn the basics of software engineering.
How did you get involved in open source software?
While I have shared individual codes, but this would be my first time which, hopefully, can be counted towards the contribution towards open source.
What are you expecting out of your GSoC experience?
I am new to software engineering. By the end of GSoC, I expect to get a taste of inner workings of developing a software suite/library. I am into GSoC to inculcate a habit of open source contribution and experience the sheer beauty of collaborative work.
What are your career goals, and how do you see the GSoC program moving you towards them?
Working with developers and experience of developing a small part of the library is itself a stepping stone towards collaborative work which transcends distance. Furthermore, fusion of my current program and development experience during GSoC will position me suitably in line with the available opportunities in the world.
Stay tuned for the next post to meet more of our GSoC students!