Google Summer of Code Program Selects 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø Computer Science Students

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VANCOUVER, Wash. – Three Washington State University Vancouver students have been selected to participate in the competitive Google Summer of Code program. Computer science graduate student Travis Hall and computer science undergraduate students Skylar Hiebert and Helena Scheuble were three of the 1,116 applicants accepted out of 5,474 proposals from around the world.

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers students a $5,000 stipend to write computer code for open-source projects. Google Summer of Code works with open-source, free-software or technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three-month period. Participating open source organizations include Drupal, Wordpress, Mozilla and Moodle.

Since its inception in 2005, Google Summer of Code has teamed up more than 4,500 students with 4,000 mentors from 85 countries. Accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor from the participating projects, work from their homes or university and typically communicate via email. The students gain exposure to real-world software development scenarios and opportunities for employment. In turn, open source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

David Chiu, assistant professor of computer science at 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø, was selected as a Google Summer of Code mentor and will work with Hiebert and Scheuble while a faculty member from Portland State University will work with Hall. Chiu is ecstatic that 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø students were selected and will have the opportunity to meet with their mentors in person rather than through email only.

"Google Summer of Code will strengthen our student's work ethic, independence, humility and character. As an international and highly selective program, the acceptance of our students is representative of the strength of the computer science program and the 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø School of Engineering and Computer Science," said Chiu.

Hall's proposal is titled "Git in the Classroom" and is a reference to the Git source code management tool. The web software will provide repositories for students to store and submit their programming projects. Hall is thrilled to be a part of a cutting-edge community.

"Google Summer of Code is a great opportunity to meet new people from around the world, work on a large-scale web app and get my name in the industry," said Hall.

Hiebert will be working on "FreeQuiz," an instructor-guided study aid for academic environments. The project will connect teachers by sharing quiz data and providing a game interface for assessing students. Hiebert is pleased to work on a project that will impact the world from the comfort of his own home.

"I had been looking for internships and ways to support my family over the summer, so I am very excited to be participating in Google Summer of Code. This project will give me experience in all aspects of software engineering while allowing me to spend time with my family," said Hiebert.

Scheuble's project, "An Android Mobile App for Barcode-Based Search of Food Allergies," is an application that will help people with food allergies identify safe alternatives in the grocery store using their Android phone. Scheuble feels that participating in the Google Summer of Code program will be an invaluable experience.

"This project is larger and more comprehensive than anything I've done in my coursework. This is an unbelievable opportunity to spend the summer working on something I am passionate about," said Scheuble.

While Google is compensating students to work on open-source projects, it does not actually own them. Chiu sees this as Google's way to give back to the community.

"Because open-source contributors are not normally paid, maintaining and improving these softwares can be hard due to lack of resources. Google's involvement is in supporting the open-source spirit, spurring interest in the community and offering resources toward advancing some of the most promising projects," said Chiu.

Google is a multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing and advertising technologies. The company runs more than one million servers in data centers around the world and processes more than one billion search requests every day. Google offers online productivity software such as its Gmail email service, social networking tool Google Buzz, web browser Google Chrome, instant messaging application Google Talk and many others.

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