[mlpack] mlpack has accepted 10 students for GSoC 2019!

[Ryan Curtin]

Hello everyone,

This year we had another very competitive Summer of Code application
process.  Overall we had 85 proposals for only a few slots.  Like every
year, we had to reject some proposals that we would have liked to
accept.  If you were not accepted, but you feel that you put together a
competitive proposal, you are probably right---and we're sorry that we
weren't able to make it work out.

In any case, thanks to the 85 applicants, who spent many hours
contributing to mlpack and making it better.  If anyone who applied for
GSoC does not have mlpack stickers but would like them, please just send
an email to stickers at mlpack.org with a mailing address and we will put
them in the mail for you (it might be a couple weeks before they
arrive).

So, this year, the following 10 projects will be mentored:

----
Mehul Kumar Nirala
    "Application of ANN Algorithms Implemented in mlpack"
    mentored by Sumedh Ghaisas and Marcus Edel

Toshal Agrawal
    "Implementing Essential Deep Learning Modules"
    mentored by Shikhar Jaiswal

Saksham Bansal
    "Implementing Essential Deep Learning Modules"
    mentored by Shikhar Jaiswal

Roberto Hueso Gomez
    "Advanced Kernel Density Estimation Improvements"
    mentored by Ryan Curtin

Sreenik Seal
    "mlpack-TensorFlow Translator"
    mentored by Atharva Khandait

Rahul Ganesh Prabhu
    "NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies & Multi-Objective
     Optimization"
    mentored by Manish Kumar and Marcus Edel

Xiaohong Ji
    "PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization)"
    mentored by Manish Kumar and Marcus Edel

SangYeon Kim
    "Quantum Gaussian Mixture Models Implementation"
    mentored by Sumedh Ghaisas

Jeffin Sam
    "String Processing Utilities"
    mentored by Mikhail Lozhnikov

Suryoday Basak
    "Particle Swarm Optimization"
    mentored by Marcus Edel and Ryan Curtin

----

Congratulations to the accepted students!  I am really looking forward
to a great summer.

The next four weeks are 'community bonding'---so, please get in touch
with your mentors, get to know them a little bit, and feel free to hang
out in IRC and if there are any questions definitely don't hesitate to
ask.

I also know there is a long backlog of PRs that still haven't been
addressed from the application period.  We will work through these
slowly as we have time, so if you submitted a PR but did not get
accepted we would still love to work with you on your contributions.

Have a great day!

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "None of your mailman friends can hear you."
ryan at ratml.org |   - Alpha