[Biopython] Gsoc 2012, SearchIO

[Peter Cock]

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Sudeep Singh <sudeep495 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Peter Cock,
>
> I am fifth year dual degree student in computer science at Indian Insitute
> of Technology, Kharagpur . I have interest in Bio-informatics and have done
> a course and a couple of projects in this area. I am interested in the
> project SearchIO listed on the Ideas Page.
> Kindly let me know how shall I proceed ?
>
> Thanks
> Sudeep

Hello Sudeep,

Welcome to the Biopython mailing list :)

Since you are interested in applying for Google Summer of Code
(GSoC), you should also subscribe to the biopython-dev mailing list,
which is were discussion about code for Biopython mostly happens.
I wrote a more detailed email about my thoughts for SearchIO on
the biopython-dev list last month:

http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/biopython-dev/2012-March/009468.html

You are welcome to write a GSoC proposal - but you will have
to hurry as the deadline is this Friday 6 April. Please see:
http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code
http://code.google.com/soc/

You should have a look at some of the previous projects online,
including their project schedule which is an important part of
the proposal. http://biopython.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code

It is also important for us to gauge your programming ability
and experience. If you can link to previous open source
project contributions, that would be a good sign. I have
suggested to other applicants that finding and reporting a
bug in Biopython (even a mistake in the documentation) is
a good start. Contributing a bug fix is even better ;)

In the case of the SearchIO project idea, we'd also be looking
for some evidence of familiarity with the tools whose output
you would be working with (BLAST, FASTA, HMMER, etc).
Perhaps you've used some in your studies? If so, you can
write that in the proposal.

You can send a draft proposal to me for comment and feedback,
but I would encourage you to share it on the biopython-dev list
for wider review - for example as a Google Doc with commenting
enabled. Several of the other students have already done this.
Don't leave this too late - I will be traveling Thursday 5 and
Friday 6 April, so won't be giving anyone any last minute
comments ;)

Remember being selected is a competition - all the OBF GSoC
project proposals will be reviewed and ranked, and projects then
allocated based on how many students Google allocates to us.
The SearchIO topic seems very popular, but only one student
would be picked to work on this.

Good luck,

Peter