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Google Code In 2013 Application

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Pjotr Prins edited this page Oct 28, 2013 · 17 revisions

Organization description

Ruby has for some time lacked libraries implementing the basic tools needed for scientific computing and data visualization. We believe that the time for a Ruby science and visualization package has come. Sometimes when a solution of sugar and water becomes super-saturated, from it precipitates a pure, delicious, and diabetes-inducing crystal of sweetness, induced by no more than the tap of a finger. So it is, we believe, with the need for numeric and visualization libraries in Ruby.

The Ruby Science Foundation exists to support the goal outlined above. Furthermore, we hope to do so in a way that supports open source, open access, and open data. We believe Ruby is an excellent framework in which to do so: it is easy to learn and easy to arrive at from other languages; moreover, Rubyists are known for releasing their source code before it's even actually written (e.g., by creating the project on GitHub first, then cloning).

Why would your organization like to participate in Google Code-in 2013?

Our mentors are both scientists and open source enthusiasts. Thus, our interest in secondary school students is two-fold: not only are they future scientists, but potential open source contributors as well.

Our other major reason revolves around a common theme of GSoC Mentor Summit discussions: the need for common infrastructure for science. Researchers are typically focused on what they need to do in the near term for finishing up a dissertation or achieving tenure. SciRuby focuses on infrastructure tasks: those things which contribute to all science, not just to individual projects. For example, how do we keep scientists from working on the same tasks over and over again? The answer is to draw more computational scientists into the open source movement. So GCI accomplishes two goals for us: it involves new students and it involves new mentors in the movement.

We also have an ulterior motive: we want to provide potential new scientists with habits that facilitate open access and availability and openness of data. Too many scientists refuse to share code on the grounds that it is a trade secret, or simply "not ready for prime-time." Peer review must move into the digital age, where code can be reviewed as easily as experimental methods, and all steps can be reproduced. Refusals to share are a product of habit more than ideology, and we want new scientists to develop good habits early on.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, we want to take a test run at some ideas we have for recruiting young women to science and open source software. We've lined up several female mentors who are also working scientists and coders, but haven't been involved with our project before, and we're reaching out to high school girls as we speak. We will be publishing several blog entries by our female mentors over the next few days (the first, by Anna Belak, is available now at sciruby.com/blog), and in doing so hope to show young women that scientific computing (or science or computing separately) are viable career paths. If our experiment is successful, we plan to apply it for the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.

What years has your organization participated in Google Summer of Code? Please indicate the years you have participated in Google Code-in or GHOP if applicable.

SciRuby participated in GSoC for the first time in 2013. However, many of our mentors and our co-project lead (Pjotr Prins) had already been involved via BioRuby (which participated for several years as a part of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation). Our tasks include many from BioRuby projects, so you might think of us as representing both organizations.

Please provide a link to your tasks page. This is one of the most important parts of your application as it lets us see what type of work you plan to have the students work on for Google Code-in and shows you already have some ideas of the types of tasks students would work on. Please be sure to include at least 4 tasks from each of the 5 categories. This is similar to the Google Summer of Code Ideas page.

https://github.com/SciRuby/sciruby/wiki/Google-Code-In-2013-Tasks

What programming languages does your organization use?

Ruby is our primary language, but we also have some tasks that involve Java, C, C++, HTML/CSS, and Javascript.

Please tell us about how your organization has prepared for Google Code-in, including what (and how many) mentors and organization administrators have agreed to help, what your schedule and response time will be during the holidays (and otherwise during the contest period) and how you plan to deal with unresponsive mentors.

As with GSoC, our organization admins will be John Woods (from SciRuby) and Pjotr Prins (from both BioRuby and SciRuby). We have commitments that the following people will mentor:

  • Anna Belak is a Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan (B.S., Physics from Virginia Tech). She will mentor for research, documentation, and some C and C++ tasks, and will provide mentorship for female GCI students.
  • Alexandra (Alex) Emly is a Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan (where she also received her B.S. in MSE). She will mentor for research, documentation, and some C and C++ tasks, and will provide mentorship for female GCI students.
  • Wan Zuhao (former GSoC student) will mentor for Plotrb tasks. He was a GSoC student this year, and wrote the Plotrb gem.
  • Will Strinz (former GSoC student) will mentor for PubliSci tasks. Like Zuhao, he was a GSoC student this year; he wrote PubliSci, a semantic web and RDF publishing tool for Ruby.
  • John Woods (GSoC org admin) is finishing his Ph.D. in Cell & Molecular Biology (Bioinformatics) at the University of Texas. He studied Computer Science at Virginia Tech. John will mentor for NMatrix, SciRuby, and Plotrb tasks.
  • Pjotr Prins (GSoC org admin) will mentor for BioRuby projects.
  • Colin Fuller is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Biochemistry at Stanford University. He will mentor for NMatrix and Plotrb.
  • Raoul JP Bonnal (GSoc mentor) will mentor for ruby-band, biogem code generator and BioRuby projetcs.
  • Alberto Arrigoni, former GSoC student, will mentor for ruby-band, he is a PhD student at the University of Milan Bicocca
  • Artem Tarasov (former GSoC student) will mentor sambamba and BioD projects

We have taken extra steps to ensure that our project has female mentors who can also serve as role models, all of whom are extremely cool people (exactly the type that high school girls will look up to). We think female mentorship is especially important for persuading young women to participate in open source, science, and software engineering generally.

Several of our committed mentors have indicated they will be around for the full GCI period. John, Pjotr, Alex, and Anna will be near a computer almost every day. If mentors are repeatedly unresponsive, we will either remove tasks for their projects entirely, or — if at all possible — have existing mentors (especially John and Pjotr) provide supplemental mentorship.

Please include a link to the logo you would like to use if your org is chosen as a mentoring org for 2013. This allows us to post the logos of the GCI 2013 mentoring orgs as soon as we announce them on November 1, 2013.

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