[mlpack] We have accepted 6 projects for Google Summer of Code 2018!

[Ryan Curtin]

Hello everyone,

I am excited to announce that this year, we have selected six students
to participate in Google Summer of Code for mlpack.  This year we had
over 100 applications, many of which were high quality.  Unfortunately,
this means 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.
There were not enough mentors to mentor all of the projects, so only a
subset of projects were chosen.

Below is the list of projects that will participate:

  Manish Kumar: "LMNN (via LRSDP) & BoostMetric Implementation",
    mentored by me

  Wenhao Huang: "Alternatives to Neighborhood-Based Collaborative
    Filtering", mentored by Mikhail Lozhnikov

  Yasmine Dumouchel: "Automated Java Binding Generator", co-mentored by
    Kevin Avignon and me

  Shikhar Jaiswal: "Implementing Essential Deep Learning Modules",
    mentored by Marcus Edel

  Atharva Khandait: "Variational Autoencoders", mentored by Sumedh
    Ghaisas

  Haritha Sreedharan Nair: "Neural Collaborative Filtering", mentored by
    Marcus Edel

Next is the 'community bonding' period, until the middle 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/4841692297953280/#projects

Congratulations to all accepted students!

Thanks,

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "So I just, uh... I just cut them up like regular
ryan at ratml.org | chickens?" - Henry Spencer