PSU GSoC 2016 Projects

We have the honor of mentoring six outstanding students this summer! Sadly, we had many more great applications that we could not accept for various reasons: we hope those folks won't be discouraged and will try again next year if possible.

Here's our 2016 lineup (in no particular order):

• Amazon Echo Recipe Integration  [feed]
  Hannah Pedersen

  As someone who loves to cook, Hannah wishes that the Amazon Echo could provide recipes while cooking. This summer, she'll be working to integrate an open source recipe database to create a new Amazon Echo skill. This new skill will allow a user to search for a desired recipe and then hear each ingredient, quantity, and step through the Echo.

• Variable Segment Length Bitmap Compression  [feed]
  Alexia Ingerson

  This summer, Alexia will be coding a compression algorithm with significant promise. Unlike the commonly used WAH (Word Aligned Hybrid), VAL (Variable-Aligned Length) compression varies depending on the column being compressed. By allowing different compression lengths, VAL can anticipate noisier columns and can compress them more efficiently than WAH can. VAL currently only exists as a Java implementation, and can be optimized if implemented in C. Then, if run in parallel, VAL would yield even greater benefits.

  Over the course of the summer, Alexia will be implementing VAL in C, allowing for parallelized compression and querying as well, to demonstrate the benefits of VAL.

• Python Interface for VLFeat Library  [feed]
  Simmi Mourya

  The VLFeat library implements popular computer vision algorithms, specialising in image understanding and local features extraction and matching. It is written in C, with an interface in MATLAB. A Python interface is provided by the PyVLFeat project, but it does not implement all the functions.

  Simmi will work on improving PyVLFeat as a GSOC project. A better Python interface will make this robust library accessible to the open source computer vision community as a replacement for proprietary tools like MATLAB.

• ruby_curry: A Curry Compiler to Ruby  [feed]
  Karthik Senthil

  Karthik's project aims at developing a compiler for Curry, a functional logic programming language, in which Ruby is the target language. Ruby is not efficient but simplifies the compiler because of its high-level features including dynamic typing and reflection. The end-product of this project will be an ideal tool that can be used by students and researchers to understand compilation techniques for functional logic programming languages, and to experiment with aspects of the language and the compiler like parallelism, security and optimizations.

• Virtual Display of Subsurface Features Using NASA's WorldWind  [feed]
  Devansh Shah

  Virtual worlds like Google Earth or NASA WorldWind do not show subsurface features with negative elevation. Devansh's project aims to be a proof-of-concept for how such a system would use opacity and translucency rendered in a virtual world to accommodate negatively elevated features.

• GIFScript: A Tool For Scripting Technical GIF Animations  [feed]
  Ali Yardım

  Technical GIF animations are effective in conveying abstract ideas, but their creation can often be challenging with traditional click-and-drag interfaces of design tools. Ali's GIFScript aims to simplify the creation of technical animations by reducing the process into writing short scripts. Users will be able to generate GIFs by writing JavaScript code and export the described GIF for use in any context.

We are quite excited to work with these folks, and are really grateful for the chance to help influence what they produce. Looking forward to a great Summer of 2016!