2023

Matching summer students with research mentors and sponsors.

The Open Source Research Experience (OSRE) program by the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) UC Santa Cruz provides support for undergraduate and graduate students contributing to open source research efforts. The goal of the program is to seed contributor communities of open source research efforts and to help make computational research efforts reproducible. With this program the OSPO participates as mentor organization in Google Summer of Code and other outreach and sponsorship programs. Information from last year’s OSRE can be found here (final reports). Table of Content: OSRE News | OSRE 2023 | For students | Student pages | For mentors | For sponsors | Timeline | Projects | Tag cloud | Mentors and Contributors

Open Source Research Experience

The 2023 Open Source Research Experience plans to apply to be a GSoC mentor organization in 2023, under the name “OSPO UC Santa Cruz” instead of “CROSS”. CROSS pioneered the Open Source Research Experience (OSRE) within the UC Santa Cruz campus. In 2022, CROSS expanded OSRE to include mentors across multiple University of California campuses and has now transitioned this program to the OSPO to expand it even further. Project ideas are listed below.

In addition to UC research projects, new this year is the Summer of Reproducibility with research projects around producing and using reproducibility artifacts (see also ctuning.org and sysartifacts). Quite a few conferences are now offering awards for reproducibility artifacts. This encourages authors to produce reproducibility artifacts. There is great potential for using these artifacts not only for validating research results but also as teaching tools in classrooms and as baselines in research labs. Making producing and using reproducibility artifacts easier can significantly accelerate the rate of insights. The Summer of Reproducibility gives summer students the opportunity to help out in this cutting-edge effort and acquire valuable skills related to reproducibility.

Summer of Reproducibility projects do not need to have at least one UC-affliated mentor.

If you are interested, have a look at our guidelines for students which includes timelines on when to contact mentors and proposal guidelines and expectations.

New projects for OSRE 2023 will be published by end of February. Student can begin reaching out to mentors in late February / early March. Proposals are due April 4, 2023.

Students interested in applying to any of our projects should join our Slack channel. Email OSRE Admins to request an invitation.

You can also use our Gitter channel for general questions before reaching out to mentors. https://gitter.im/uc_ospo-osre/community

Due to the open source nature of all OSRE projects, contributions are welcomed from any college or university student (over the age of 18) from anywhere in the world. Please note that you must have work authorization in your country of residence to take part in this program. Please contact ospo-info-group@ucsc.edu if you have any question on your eligibility.

We typically support the work of undergraduate students; however graduate students may also apply to work on more advanced project ideas. Please check out the project ideas page and contact the mentor if you have questions.

Return to 2024 student pages

We are asking OSRE 2023 students and contributors to share their progress on a regular basis. We are excited to be able to highlight their work on this website and in events such as our Open Source Symposium. This blog post contains instructions on how to start highlighting contributor work with blog posts, also known as “student pages”. And here they are:

The UCSC OSPO is looking for mentors to be part of our 2023 Open Source Research Experience Program (OSRE), including those interested in working under the Summer of the Summer of Reproducibility (SoR). Please read the FAQ for Mentors and, if interested in participating, the instructions for posting projects.

Priority deadline for Project Ideas from Mentors is February 6, 2024.

While typical OSRE supported projects require mentors who are connected to University of California-based open source projects, thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, the Summer of Reproducibility allows us to also support additional mentors interested in research projects related to the creation and usage of reproducibilty artifacts.

The goal of OSRE 2023 is to increase student capabilities in working in open source projects and creating reproducible artifacts, as well as add productive open source contributors and promote open source and reproducibility throughout the UC system and beyond.

The program team at UCSC OSPO values diversity and inclusion in all our projects. We invite mentors from groups traditionally excluded in computer science/open source communities to participate in this program.

If you could use undergraduate research assistance over the summer with your on-going research, this is a great opportunity to get matched to top students. Following the Google Summer of Code model, the OSRE allows the mentors to choose the students they want to work with based on an interactive and iterative proposal process. The proposal process provides mentors the opportunity to select someone they want to work with who will benefit their project and research.

Your project needs to

• EITHER have at least one mentor affiliated with one of the University of California campuses or associated DOE national labs
• OR have some connection to producing or using reproducibility artifacts.

For University of California (UC) projects: Any UC-affiliated faculty, researchers or graduate students working on projects that are or will ultimately be part of an open source community/ecosystem.

For Summer of Reproducibility (SoR) projects: Researchers and faculty from any US-based organization looking to support the open source production or use of reproducibility artifacts.

All software created as part of an OSRE project must be released as free and open source under a license that is both approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and recognized as free by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

For more details, please see the FAQ for Mentors and the instructions for posting projects.

Is your organization looking to better utilize open source and want to support projects that directly benefit your work?

Does your company want to strengthen the talent pipeline able to work on technologies essential to your organization’s success?

Do you want to collaborate with innovative open source projects being developed by University of California researchers?

The UC Open Source Research Experience (OSRE) offers your organization the chance to participate in projects that can help your development cycles run faster, benefit from wide collaborations, and help support workforce development in domains your organization needs.

To become a sponsor, fill out the Sponsorship Interest Form. You will be asked to indicate the level of sponsorship you would like to fund and the open source projects you are most interested in engaging with.

• Collaborating on innovative project that are of strategic interest to your industry;
• Supporting the teaching of open source techniques to a wide range of student contributors;
• Interacting with the next generation of open source leaders and up and coming talent; and
• Recognition as an OSRE Sponsor at the Open Source Research Symposium (Fall 2023)

Becoming a sponsor is easy! Fill out the Sponsorship Interest Form or reach out to the OSRE Admins by April 20. Information requested by the form include: name of contact person, level of sponsorship, and projects you are most interested in (if applicable.) The OSRE Admins will follow up with next steps for finalizing the sponsorship process.

Return to 2024 timeline

| Feb 7 | Deadline for posting projects to be considered in the OSPO’s GSoC mentor organization application | | Feb 22 | Accepted Mentor Organizations announced by GSoC - OSPO Accepted! | | Feb 22 - Apr 3 | Mentors help candidates improving their applications, applications are submitted | | Mar 20 | Deadline for students to join Slack channel (a student proposal requirement – do so as early as possible) | | Apr 4 | Student proposal deadline | | Apr 5 - 22 | Mentors evaluate and rank student proposals | | Apr 22 | Rankings due from mentors, sent to OSRE Org Admins | | Apr 27 | Student proposal rankings completed by Org Admins | | May 4 | Accepted student proposals announced - |

Go to 2022 projects or return to 2024 projects

In the field of computer networks and wireless communication systems, the availability of open access networking and cloud computing testbeds (GENI, CloudLab, Chameleon, FABRIC, and others) has been transformative in promoting reproducible research and in making high-quality experiential learning available to students and educators at a wide range of colleges and universities.