Interested in GSoC 2025 — Project 1 (MDAnalysis + WESTPA streaming)

[shubham-programmerr]

Hello MDAnalysis team,

My name is Shubham and I am interested in applying for GSoC 2025 for the project:
"Integrating MDAnalysis streaming analysis within WESTPA propagators".

I have gone through the project ideas and the related WESTPA pull request.
Could you please guide me on how to start contributing and how to prepare a strong proposal?

Thank you for your time.

[jeremyleung521]

Hi Shubham,

This is a GSOC 2025 project idea that has already been worked on (and you're about 6 months too late for the GSOC 2025). As Irfan had mentioned in another post...

Regarding GSoC, please note the following:

1. MDAnalysis has not made a decision on whether or not they will apply to GSoC next year (in fact, I don't even know that Google has announced GSoC for 2026). Even after making a decision to apply, we won't know if we're going to be accepted as an organisation until ~ February - April 2026. There is always a chance that we won't be able to participate in the coming year.
2. Generally (but not always) MDAnalysis GSoC projects tend to require some previous knowledge of molecular simulations.

Originally posted by @IAlibay in #5137 (comment)

Plus we don't know if WESTPA will be joining GSOC and/or collaborating with MDAnalysis in 2026. I would suggest at least waiting for the programs to be announced before picking project ideas. As open source software packages, all are welcome to contribute though.

[shubham-programmerr]

Thank you for the clarification, this is very helpful.

I understand that GSoC 2026 participation is not confirmed yet and that
project availability depends on whether the organization is accepted.

Independently of GSoC, I’m still interested in learning and contributing
to MDAnalysis/WESTPA as an open-source project and improving my technical
skills.

Thank you again for the guidance.