Stemformatics joins Google's Summer of Code

Stemformatics has been accepted into the 2018 Google Summer of Code Program as a mentor organisation for the first time.

Stemformatics is a web based resource  for stem cell biologists. It allows them to quickly and easily explore their datasets and benchmark them against 350+ manually curated, high quality public datasets. All the data on Stemformatics has been hand-picked, curated and checked for experimental reproducibility and design quality, and normalised in-house.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program focused on introducing students to open source software development. Students work on a 3 month programming project with an open source organization during their break from university, gaining exposure to real-world software development and techniques.

This opportunity will allow students from all over the world to apply for a scholarship and work with the Stemformatics team on projects such as integrating and developing visualisations for the new world of single cell data, building infrastructure to help the data mining of Stemformatics data and collaborating with projects like InnateDB.

“We are grateful for being accepted as a mentor organisation by Google. We hope this will allow us to attract world class students who might want to contribute to Stemformatics in the future as open source collaborators” commented manager Rowland Mosbergen.

“It was our first time applying for GSoC and we had to improve our transparency and our external communication channels to qualify and be competitive.  It has already made a difference in the way we approach our day-to-day activities”.

Since its inception in 2005, the Google Summer of Code program has brought together 13,000+ student participants and 12,000 mentors from over 125 countries worldwide. Google Summer of Code has produced 33,000,000+ lines of code for 608 open source organisations.

Stemformatics, a research service funded through the Centre for Stem Cell Systems and Stem Cells Australia, is a joint initiative between the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne. ANDS/NeCTAR/RDS provides all the cloud computing needs for all of Stemformatics, including all student projects.

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Rowland Mosbergen