Emory BMI and Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019

Google has announced the list of accepted organizations for GSoC 2019. We (Emory BMI) have been selected once more as a mentoring organization, after our successful summers in 2016 and earlier. :) Our project ideas - https://github.com/sharmalab/Emory-BMI-GSoC-2019 Our ideas are on the topics of big data, data visualization, and machine learning, in the context of biomedical research.

The stipend varies by the country of the student's university. For example, for Portuguese universities, it is 4200 $ in total (for a 3 month of coding - May 27, 2019 - August 19, 2019) for each successful student. Students can apply for projects from around 100 of mentoring organizations (including Emory BMI) that are accepted as a mentoring organization.

Anyone can apply as long as they have never been a student in GSoC before (new regulations!) and currently a student of age 18 or more from a university/college.

More details - https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/

P.S: This will be my 9th year with GSoC and 5th time as a mentor. However, this is my first time as the primary organization administrator. :) I started my first GSoC as a student in 2009. It has been 10 years already.

Coffee on Macbook Pro

Coffee with my other laptop

Back in Atlanta, I am busy with work and life. The life here is good, except once when I mistakenly toppled a glass of milk coffee on my Macbook pro. I immediately toppled the Macbook and wiped it clean. It turned off immediately on its own. After cleaning up the visible traces of coffee, I let it dry for a week up side down, and then turned it on. It worked perfectly, with just a line appearing on the corner of the screen. I thought, everything is fine and turned it off. After one more week later, I turned on my Macbook again. It did not turn on at all. 

The system admin opened the Macbook and found that it is probably fried over time. He said, had I informed him instantly and let him clean it with distilled water to permanently erase the traces of the milk coffee, I could have saved the Macbook. Since my Macbook does not have the Apple Care + warranty, the Apple Authorized repair person said it would cost me 1,500$ to repair the Macbook by sending it to Apple for the liquid damage. Now the Macbook is idling, dead. Lessons learned - to be even more careful with liquids, and to buy warranties and extended warranties whenever possible for the expensive goods.