July 13, 2021— Eight B.Tech students of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham – ranked the 4th Best Overall University in India in the 2020 National Institution Ranking Framework (NIRF) – have been selected for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2021, a global annual program in which search engine giant Google awards stipends to students who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer.
The selected Amrita students include Alluri Harshit Varma (The Terasology Foundation) and Nived (TensorFlow) as well as others from Amrita’s student clubs amFOSS and bi0s, namely, Pranjal Singh, Vishnu Madhav, Simran Kathpalia, Aswin C, Anoushka Ramesh and Mainak Deb. In addition, two previous-year GSoC students of Amrita from amFOSS, Shashank Priyadarshi and Abhijit Ramesh are also participating this year as mentors for The Apache Software Foundation.
Said Vipin Pavithran, Chief Mentor of amFOSS & bi0s, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham: “Google Summer of Code program is a great opportunity for students and mentors to work together on an open-source project for a period of over three months. Over the last 14 years, many of our students have contributed to various open-source organizations such as VideoLAN, The Linux Foundation, WikiMedia, NetBSD, GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, and INCF. Since 2010, members from amFOSS have been getting selected for the Google Summer of Code program every year. Last year, seven students were selected for GSoC 2020 putting Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri Campus at No. 10 in the global Google Summer of Code 2020 rankings – ahead of several premier institutions in India and abroad from a total of 550 universities bringing the grand total of 55+ GSoC Student Developers from the club.”
Dubbed as the largest open-source event, GSoC requires interested students to submit proposals to one or two participating open-source organisations, describing the details of the project that they wish to do along with their past experiences. The organisation mentors then select the most promising proposals and mentor the students for completing the project.
Said Vipin Pavithran, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham: “Of the eight selected for the program this year, one student is in her first year of college. Along with them, two of amFOSS members – Abhijit Ramesh and Shashank Priyadarshi were selected as mentors for the program. The journey continues this year despite the pandemic and remote working hurdles and couldn’t have been possible without the constant guidance and support of our chancellor, Amma, the university and alumni. With Amma’s blessings, ever since 2006, amFOSS has become one of the leading computer science clubs in India, along with team bi0s being ranked as the No. 1 Capture-The-Flag (CTF) team in the country and 16th internationally in 2020.”
