On Friday, we were thrilled to learn that we were accepted to the Google Summer of Code program for 2012! Now in its eighth year, this program pairs students with open source projects for summer internships. Google pays the student a stipend, we get smart students thinking about our tough problems, and everyone wins.
With such a generous program, it’s not surprising that many organizations applied. Of the 180 organizations that were ultimately chosen, there are several other bioinformatics organizations as well. These include the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, the Genome Informatics group, and the National Resource for Network Biology (NRNB). (A particular hat tip to Alex Pico with the NRNB for his invaluable advice on our GSoC application.)
We now are actively looking for students who want to work with us on a summer internship! Check out our “ideas page“, then head over to our Crowdsourcing Biology Google Group to discuss how to make it into a compelling internship application.
Why choose us as a mentoring organization? Because:
- Crowdsourcing is cool (particularly BioGPS, the Gene Wiki, and biological games)
- Past internship projects have resulted in coauthorship in several peer-reviewed publications
- Past interns have gone on to the best grad schools (e.g., UPenn) and the best employers (e.g., Google, Booz & Co., Novartis, Biosite, AstraZeneca)
We’ve already received interest from many students from across the world, and we’re looking forward to more discussions!