[mlpack] We have accepted 10 projects for Google Summer of Code 2017

[Ryan Curtin]

Hello everyone,

I am excited to announce that this year, we have selected an
unprecedented ten students to participate in Google Summer of Code 2017
for mlpack.  This year, we received 69 applications total, very many of
which were high quality.  Unfortunately, we were not able to accept all
of the projects that we would have liked to.  In many cases, we received
multiple very competitive applications for a single project, and were
forced to choose only one.

Below is the list of projects that will participate:

1 - "Deep Learning Modules" -- Kris Singh, mentored by Mikhail Lozhnikov

2 - "Cross-validation and hyper-parameter tuning" -- Kirill Mishchenko,
    mentored by me

3 - "Reinforcement Learning Framework" -- Shangtong Zhang, mentored by
    Marcus Edel

4 - "Neural Evolution Algorithms on NES games" -- Kartik Nighania,
    mentored by Marcus Edel

5 - "Parallel stochastic optimization methods" -- Shikhar Bhardwaj,
    mentored by Yannis Mentekidis

6 - "Frank-Wolfe Algorithm for Sparse Optimization and Regularization of
    Atom Norms" -- Chenzhe Diao, mentored by Stephen Tu

7 - "Augmented RNNs" -- Konstantin Sidorov, co-mentored by Marcus Edel
    and me

8 - "Neural Turing Machines" -- Sumedh Ghaisas, co-mentored by Marcus
    Edel and me

9 - "Better Benchmarking for mlpack libraries" -- Dewang Sultania,
    co-mentored by Marcus Edel and me

10 - "Build testing with Docker and VMs" -- Saurabh Gupta, mentored by
    me

This is, by far, the biggest Summer of Code we have participated in; I
am humbled by the opportunity to work with so many excellent students.
I am looking forward to the many improvements and functionality
increases that will be added to the library.  And maybe we can get to
know each other a little bit and have some fun during the summer also.
:)

Next is the 'community bonding' period, until the end of May.  This is
the time during which students can get to know people involved with
mlpack, and become more knowledgeable about the library itself.  So,
feel free to send a hello if you like, or pop into IRC or whatever.

You can find more information about each of the projects on Google's
website:

  https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/5066356388003840/

Congratulations to all accepted students!

Thanks,

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "I don't really come from outer space."
ryan at ratml.org |   - L.J. Washington