This post is part of our series of Google Summer of Code wrap-ups, guest posts from students, mentors and organization admins reflecting on Google Summer of Code 2016. Don’t miss our first post and follow along for more wrap-up posts and announcements.

We were so excited to be a part of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) again after a year off, we pulled together over 50 project ideas and dozens of eager mentors to develop open source code for network biology research. Organized as the National Resource for Network Biology (NRNB), we selected 15 proposals that brought together well-matched students, mentors and project ideas.

All 15 students passed their midterm and final evaluations, resulting in a wide range of (mostly) production-ready code, covering algorithm, UI, importer and converter development for both web and desktop for Cytoscape, cytoscape.js, SBML, SBGN, cBioPortal, Cell Designer, GraphSpace and more.

We are proud of the technical accomplishments and productivity of our students, and we are also proud of the many important aspects of diversity our students represent in the GSoC program, including geographical, gender and academic. Here are some numbers and facts about our 15 students compared to overall GSoC 2016 student stats in parentheses:

• 9 different countries, including 1 (of 2) from Croatia, 1 (of 3) from Armenia and 2 (of 12) from Turkey
• 20% female (compared to 12% overall)
• 67% Computer Science (compared to 78% overall), including PhD students in Biological Oceanography and Medical Biochemistry & Biotechnology, an MS student in Bioinformatics, and a pre-med undergraduate.

Every year Google Summer of Code pairs university students with mentors to hone their skills while working on open source projects, and every year we like to post wrap-ups from the open source projects about their experience and what students accomplished. Stay tuned for more!

The Holistic Urban Energy Simulation (HUES) platform is an open source platform for facilitating the design and control of renewables-based distributed energy systems. The platform is an initiative of the Urban Energy Systems Laboratory at Empa in Switzerland, in collaboration with our research partners at ETH-Zurich, EPFL, the University of Geneva and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. As we push towards the second version of the HUES platform, we had help from three bright and enthusiastic students as part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC).

Air flow pattern around a building configuration (left); link to Rhinoceros/Grasshopper (middle & right)

People in cities are suffering more and more from scorching heat, caused by global warming and bad urban planning. This traps heat inside cities and has led to soaring air conditioning demand, making cities even hotter – a vicious circle!  Clever bioclimatic urban design can mitigate urban heat by facilitating the use of natural ventilation and guiding air streams. However, the simulation of wind flow is a computationally and technically demanding task. There is a need to provide urban planners and architects with a tool able to predict wind flow patterns in real-time to facilitate development of energy efficient and passive designs.

A connection between two bus objects in a CopyHub container

• Have authorisation to work in the United Kingdom
• A Levels (or equivalent) at grade B or above (or equivalent) in Math or Science related subjects
• Ability to speak and write in English fluently and idiomatically
• Prior coding experience in any programming language

Posted by the Tech Student Development team

• Gain relevant and valuable skills through a practical hands-on learning experience
• Build a true relationship with a client and make a real-life impact in their community
• Gain exposure to the digital marketing landscape using real money on a live advertising platform
• Become AdWords Certified as a way to showcase their AdWords knowledge to potential employers
• Win awesome prizes like a trip to the Googleplex, a donation for their nonprofit partner, digital devices, cool Google swag and more

• The optional Google+ Social Media Marketing category is being replaced with a new and exciting AdWords Certification Award.
• In addition to all Winners, Finalists and Semi-Finalists, student teams completing the Challenge with a Strong performance rating will also receive a personalized certificate noting their status in the competition this year.
• The algorithm has been updated to evaluate AdWords performance beyond text ads with a primary focus on the Search Network, and will now factor in the structure and performance of the following campaign types: Search Network Only Campaigns, Display Network Only Campaigns, Video Campaigns, Shopping Campaigns and Mobile App Promotion/Universal App Campaigns.
• This year campaigns do not need to serve for a maximum of 21 consecutive calendar days and instead student teams have the option to pause their campaigns to optimize for their client’s business needs. See the competition Terms & Conditions for more details.
• The Digital Marketing Course content has been completely revamped and includes new resources like the Digital Garage, a one-stop shop for mastering digital marketing with free courses on everything from search to social media, the Analytics Academy and resources on Google My Business.

Excited to see your submissions!

This guest post is a part of a short series about Tatyana Goldberg, Guy Yachdav and Christian Dallago and the journey that was inspired by their participation as Google Summer of Code mentors for the BioJS project. Check out the first and second posts in the series.

This blog post marks the end of our short series following our adventures in open source. As you may recall, it all started thanks to Google Summer of Code (GSoC) which brought our team together. The GSoC collaboration spurred us to start a class at Technical University of Munich (TUM) that eventually took on the Game of Thrones data science project which became an international sensation.

The success of our Game of Thrones project opened a lot of doors. First, we were invited to participate in the Morpheus Cup which is a prestigious university olympiad that brings together students from all over Europe to compete in digital challenges.

Our team rocked the competition winning two challenges and making it to the finalist stage in the third challenge. We were honored to represent our university and grateful for Google’s sponsorship of our team.

The students and mentors of the Game of Thrones project at the Morpheus Cup challenge in May 2016. From left to right: Georgi Anastasov, Emiliyana Kalinova, Maximilian Bandle (all students), Guy Yachdav (mentor), Christian Dallago (mentor), Tobias Piffrader, Theodor Chesleran (both students) and Tatyana Goldberg (mentor).

Google Code-in is our annual contest that gives students age 13 to 17 experience in computer science through contributions to open source projects. This blog post is the third installment in our series reflecting on the experiences of Google Code-in 2015 grand prize winners. Be sure to check out the first and second posts in the series, too.

In this post we look at the stories of three more Google Code-in (GCI) grand prize winners. Our grand prize winners come from a pool of 980 students from 65 countries who, all told, completed 4,776 tasks for 14 open source projects.

We were lucky enough to host many of these extraordinary young coders at Google HQ for a few days this summer. Over that time, we learned more about where they came from, what they gained by participating in GCI and what they plan to do as new members of the open source community.

Google Code-in 2015 Grand Prize Winners explore the SF Bay Area in this immersive Google Street View display with fellow open source program managers Stephanie Taylor and Cat Allman who run GCI.

Our first story today is that of Břetislav Hájek from the Czech Republic, who chose to work with the OpenMRS project because he sees their work as important. OpenMRS is an open source medical record system that improves healthcare delivery in resource-constrained regions.

Břetislav got into computer science through web development, so he started by working on tasks related to HTML and CSS. This gave him confidence to take on more challenging tasks. His favorite task was creating a web application for searching through patients. While he didn’t find it hard, he learned a lot and was proud to have made something useful. Reflecting on Google Code-in, Břetislav said: “That’s the thing I like about GCI. I always treat tasks as opportunities to learn something new. And the learning is more entertaining since I work on real problems.”

IRC communication proved to be an important part of Břetislav’s success. Other students were there and tried to help each other out as best they could, and there were always mentors available to help guide them. He enjoyed the friendly environment. The community motivated him to work harder and try new things. In the end, Břetislav was glad to have participated and is motivated to continue his work.

Next we have Vicente Bermudez from Uruguay who discovered Google Code-in through a story in the local news celebrating a Uruguayan grand prize winner from a previous year. Like Břetislav, Vicente chose to work on the OpenMRS project because the cause spoke to him.

He got into programming through his love of video games and his desire to create his own. He hadn’t heard about programming before but initial research piqued his interest. Following his curiosity, he learned Java and expanded his knowledge from there. Conveniently, much of OpenMRS is built with Java!

The task-based structure worked well for Vicente. He was unsure of some tasks, recognizing that he didn’t know much about what they required. For instance, he hesitated to take on one that involved creating a Windows Phone app because he had never created a mobile app. But he persisted and, five days later, he had completed it and learned a lot about mobile development.

It surprised Vicente how much he learned in such a short time span. He had this to say: “During the contest I gained knowledge in a variety of fields such as programming, testing, video editing, and graphic design. The mentors encouraged us to think about quality instead of quantity, and I learned a lot from that.”

Vicente loved his Google Code-in experience and plans to continue contributing to open source projects, especially OpenMRS.

The last student story we’ll share today is that of Anesu Mafuvadze, a student from the US who worked with the Sustainable Computing Research Group (SCoRe). His introduction to computer science came through robotics in one of his high school classes which used a language similar to C++.

Anesu was thrilled by the experience of bringing the robots to life with code. He described his introduction this way: “The more I programmed the more captivated I became; I loved how easily I could convert my wildest ideas into fully functioning programs; I loved the thrill of working in an environment that demands minute precision; above all, I loved creating programs that other people found useful.”

Online documentation and YouTube tutorials fueled Anesu’s education for several years as he picked up multiple languages and began participating in programming contests. But he knew something was missing, Anesu lacked real world coding experience and had never collaborated with others. As such, he didn’t pay much attention to the readability of his code, wasn’t aware of version control, didn’t write extensive tests and had never built something for the common good.

Enter Google Code-in. Working with mentors helped Anesu deliver quality and building open source software required him to learn collaboration tools and value readability. The contest also gave him an opportunity to build on skills that he hadn’t developed, such as web development. Anesu says the experience made him a better programmer and that the introduction to open source has motivated him to use his skills on projects that benefit society.

Thank you to Břetislav, Vicente and Anesu for their hard work contributing to open source projects and for sharing their stories with us. We have one more blog post coming with more student stories so stay tuned!

By Josh Simmons, Open Source Programs Office

This guest post is a part of a short series about Guy Yachdav, Tatyana Goldberg and Christian Dallago and the journey that was inspired by their participation as Google Summer of Code mentors for the BioJS project. Don’t miss the first post in the series. Heads up, this post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones seasons 5 and 6!

We built on the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) philosophy and the lessons we learned from participating in 2014 by starting a JavaScript Technology class at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

We began with two dozen students who worked on expanding the BioJS visualization library. Our class became popular quickly and the number of applicants doubled each semester (nearly 180 applicants for 40 seats in the 2016 summer term).

In 2016 our team grew to include Christian Dallago, who had joined as a GSoC mentor. Together we decided to break with tradition of our course’s previous semesters. Instead of focusing on data visualization, we wanted to introduce students to data science with JavaScript. To get our students fully engaged, we decided the project would center on data from the hit TV show, Game of Thrones.

Our aim was to create an online portal for Game of Thrones fans which would:

1. Provide the most comprehensive, structured and open data set about the Game of Thrones world accessible via API.
2. Present an interactive map based on JavaScript.
3. Listen to what people are saying on Twitter about each of the show’s characters.
4. Use machine learning algorithms to predict the likelihood of each character’s death.

Our plan worked — the students were engaged. It was a beautiful sight to see: GitHub repos humming with activity as each dev team delved deeper into their projects. As a project manager, you know you’ve got something good when issues are being opened and closed at 4:00 AM!

The results were mind blowing. In 50 days of programming, 36 students opened over 1,200 issues and pull requests, pushed 3,300 commits, released four apps to NPM, and, of course, produced one absolutely amazing website.

The website amasses data from 2,028 characters. Our map shows 240 landmarks and the paths traveled by 28 characters. Our Twitter sentiment analysis tool analyzed over 3 million tweets. And we launched the first ever machine learning-based prediction algorithm that predicts the likelihood of dying for the 1,451 characters in the show that are still alive.

Visualization of Twitter sentiment analysis data for Jon Snow during season 5 of Game of Thrones. The X axis shows the timeline and the Y axis shows the number of positive (green) and negative (red) tweets. Each tweet is analyzed by an algorithm using a neural network to determine whether the tweet’s writer has a positive, negative or neutral attitude toward the character.

Since launch, the site’s popularity has skyrocketed. Following our press release, we were covered by over 1,500 media outlets, most notably Time, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Daily Mail, BBC, Reuters, The Telegraph, CNET and many more. HowStuffWorks, The Vulture and others produced videos about the site and Chris Hardwick’s Comedy Central show did a segment about us. We’ve also given countless interviews to TV, radio and newspapers.

	Google Analytics for the website. Left chart shows the number of visitors to the website during the first week after launch, reaching over 73K visitors on April 25th. Right chart shows the number of visitors at a given time point during the same week.

The most exciting part of the project was predicting the likelihood that any given character would die using machine learning. Machine learning algorithms find rules and patterns in the data, things that humans cannot obviously and simply detect. Once the rules and patterns are identified, we apply machine learning to make inferences or predictions from novel, previously unseen, data sets.

Warning: The next paragraphs contain spoilers for seasons 5 and 6 of Game of Thrones!

In order to predict the likelihood of a character’s death, we collected information about all of the characters that appeared in books 1 to 5 and analyzed over 30 features, including age, gender, marital status and others. Then we used a support vector machine (SVM) to statistically compare the features of characters, both dead and alive, to predict who would get the axe next. Our prediction was correct for 74% of all cases and surprised us by placing a number of characters thought to be relatively safe in grave danger.

According to our predictions, Jon Snow, who was seemingly betrayed and murdered by fellow members of the Night’s Watch at the end of season 5, had only an 11% chance of dying. Indeed, Jon has risen from the dead in the second episode of season 6! We also predicted that the rulers of Dorn (Doran and Trystane) Martell are at a high likelihood of death and, as predicted, they were taken out in the first episode of the new season.

Of course, as is always the case with predictions, there were also misses. We didn’t expect Roose Bolton to be killed off nor did we see Hodor’s departure coming.

This experience was an amazing ride for our team and it all started with Google Summer of Code! In the next post we’ll share what followed and where we see ourselves heading in the future.

By Guy Yachdav, Tatyana Goldberg and Christian Dallago, BioJS

Google Code-in is our annual contest that gives students age 13 to 17 experience in computer science through contributions to open source projects. This blog post is the second installment in our series reflecting on the experiences of Google Code-in 2015 grand prize winners. Be sure to check out the first post in the series.

This week we profile three more grand prize winners from Google Code-in 2015. These students came from all around the world to celebrate with us in June after successfully completing 692 tasks that resulted in significant contributions to the participating open source projects.

Google Code-in 2015 Grand Prize Winners and Mentors were treated to a cruise around San Francisco Bay.

Google Code-in is our annual contest to help pre-university students gain real-world computer science experience by taking on tasks of varying difficulty levels with the help of volunteer mentors. These tasks are created by open source projects so while learning, the students are contributing to the software many of us use on a daily basis.

The finalists and winners for our 2015/2016 season were announced in February and, in June, the grand prize winners joined us for four days of learning and celebration. Students and their guardians came from all around the world. One of my favorite things, as one of the Googler hosts, was seeing the light bulbs go on above parents’ heads as they came to understand open source and why it’s so important. These parents and guardians were even more proud of the students as they learned how much their teenager has contributed to the world through participating in Google Code-in.

We’ve invited contest winners and organizations to write about their experience and will be sharing their stories in a series of blog posts. This marks the first post in the series.

Google Code-in 2015 Grand Prize Winners and Mentors

The Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC) provides a hands-on learning platform for students around the world to develop their online marketing skills and gain practical experience working with real businesses and non-profits to solve real problems and produce real results.

AdWords Business Awards

• The Global Winning team comes from the ESG UQAM – School of Management Sciences in Canada, under Professor Harold Boeck. The team of James Forbes, Nicolas Archambault-Doucet, Esme Fentener Levi and Thomas St-Amour worked with Alvéole, a company that helps people and organizations install and care for urban honeybee colonies.

• The Americas Winner comes from James Madison University in the United States, under Professor Theresa B. Clarke. The team of Lynn Radocha, Alexander Adley, Maianh Phan, John Thompson and Cari Ross worked with the Rockingham/Harrisonburg SPCA, a non-profit animal rescue shelter that provides care for all dogs, cats, and other small animals until they can be adopted into a safe, permanent home.
• The Asia & Pacific Winner comes from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, under Professor Shilpa Sawant in India. The team of Aniruddha Pandhare, Devarsh Ganatra, Urvi Talaty, Dhananjay Thaker, Akash Pandey and Rini Antony worked with Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vaidyakiya Pratishthan, a non-profit Trust that invests in various medical and social welfare initiatives to transform the lives of the poor and needy in the drought prone ‘Marathwada’ region of Maharashtra.
• The Europe Winner comes from the University of Turku in Finland, under Professor Joni Salminen. The team of Elina Ojala, Miia Bergström, Paula Suominen and Emma Jalonen worked with ResQ, a recently founded company with a mission to help consumers “rescue” leftovers from restaurants and acquire quality meals at a cheap price, while restaurants profit from selling food that would have otherwise been wasted.
• The Middle East & Africa Winner comes from Daystar University in Kenya, under Professor Maranga Moriasi. The team of Jeffrey Kanae, Moses Njeri Khatiebere, Evelyne Magaju, Sharone Awuori Tindi and Roselinda Were worked with Youth on the Move, a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower youth with epilepsy to build their skills, stand up for themselves and transform their desires into realistic plans and actions.

Google+ Social Media Marketing Awards

• The Global Winner comes from the Dwarkadas J. Sanghvi College of Engineering in India under Professor Khushali Deulkar. The team of Rosanlal Behera, Niki Jain, Harsh Jain, Chandrasekhar Raman, Pratik Bhambhani and Aayushi Dholakia worked with Kossine, a Neebal initiative and coaching institute that specializes in teaching Computer Programming and Electronics courses to students.

• The Americas Winner comes from James Madison University in the United States, under Professor Theresa B. Clarke. The team of Matt Deters, Molly McDevitt, Caitlin Fikac, Natalie Krewin and Claudia Schnorbus worked with the Poricy Park Conservancy, a non-profit that preserves 250 acres of open space, prehistoric fossil beds, and the historic Murray Farmhouse for the surrounding community.
• The Asia & Pacific Winner comes from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, under Professor Shilpa Sawant in India. The team of Aniruddha Pandhare, Devarsh Ganatra, Urvi Talaty, Dhananjay Thaker, Akash Pandey and Rini Antony worked with Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vaidyakiya Pratishthan, a non-profit Trust that invests in various medical and social welfare initiatives to transform the lives of the poor and needy in the drought prone ‘Marathwada’ region of Maharashtra.
• The Europe Winner comes from Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, under Professor Elena Vitkauskaitė. The team of Mantas Mitrauskas, Merita Simanavičiūtė, Agnė Raulinavičiūtė, Severina Sekrytė and Paulina Lazauskaitė worked with Dalinuosi.lt, an online sharing platform that promotes the protection of the environment and stimulates responsible usage by allowing people to lend their goods or borrow them from other consumers.
• The Middle East & Africa Winner comes from the Institute of Management Technology, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, under Professor Ali Zalzala. The team of Pratiksha Kumar, Shikhar Ahuja and Rahul Jain worked with Community Tracks, a non-profit in California that has a global agenda to provide under-served communities with sustainable technology solutions and associated education services that enhance the quality of life.

AdWords Social Impact Awards

• The 1st Place Winner comes from James Madison University in the United States, under Professor Theresa B. Clarke. The team of Emily Maynard, Jacob Shibley, Christine Provino, Jacob Brown and Amy Goffe worked with the Children’s Science Center, a non-profit children’s science museum focused on hands-on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning and providing unique opportunities for children to explore, create and be inspired.

• The 2nd Place Winner comes from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, under Professor Shilpa Sawant in India. The team of Aniruddha Pandhare, Devarsh Ganatra, Urvi Talaty, Dhananjay Thaker, Akash Pandey and Rini Antony worked with Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vaidyakiya Pratishthan, a non-profit Trust that invests in various medical and social welfare initiatives to transform the lives of the poor and needy in the drought prone ‘Marathwada’ region of Maharashtra.
• The 3rd Place Winner comes from James Madison University in the United States, under Professor Theresa B. Clarke. The team of Lynn Radocha, Alexander Adley, Maianh Phan, John Thompson and Cari Ross worked with the Rockingham/Harrisonburg SPCA, a non-profit animal rescue shelter that provides care for all dogs, cats, and other small animals until they can be adopted into a safe, permanent home.

To learn more about the Google Online Marketing Challenge and to pre-register for next year’s competition, please watch the GOMC video and visit our website: www.google.com/onlinechallenge.

This guest post is a part of a short series about Tatyana Goldberg and Guy Yachdav, instructors at Technical University of Munich, and the journey that was inspired by their participation as Google Summer of Code mentors for the BioJS project.

Tatyana Goldberg and Guy Yachdav, GSoC mentors and open source enthusiasts. Photo taken at the MorpheusCup competition Luxembourg, May 2016.