Pakistani Students accepted at Google Summer of Code Global Program

Islamabad: A team of students at Software Engineering Research Centre (SERC) FAST-NU, Lahore submitted a proposal in the domain of MySQL which was accepted at Google Summer of Code to incorporate "Change Tracking/Synchronization" functionality for phpMyAdmin.

Young Pakistani students are reaching out for new opportunities highlighting the fact that youth of Pakistan is talented and is in pursuit to achieve excellence in the knowledge based economy.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. They work with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 2,500 successful student participants and 2,500 mentors from 98 countries worldwide. Through GSoC, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits.

SERC, FAST-NU is executing its project titled “Integration of Open Source Software Projects in IT Education” fully funded by National ICT R&D Fund (Ministry of IT & Telecom) worth PKR 37.6 million which aims to provide education in Software Engineering by preparing the students for their utilization in the software industry. This requires equipping them with skills and knowledge necessary for developing industrial strength software. This could ideally be achieved by involving the students in realistic projects and aims for a new method of teaching software engineering to undergraduate students based on open source software.

Participating in GSoC is a practical step towards this objective and gives students hands on experience by their particular mentoring organization’s project.  Students working at “Integration of Open Source Software Projects in IT Education” project at SERC were filtered through a selection process for GSoC program. The project has been registered in Zahra Naeem’s name however two students, Zahra Naeem and Sehrish Abdul Malik, are working on it together. Usman Aftab and Muhammad Adeel Khan – Research Officers at SERC, are acting as mentors to the students and will guide the students according to their needs.

National ICT R&D Fund congratulates the team at SERC, FAST-NU for its international recognition at one of the best platforms in the world, and for providing students good programming practices and opening new horizons for the talented students pursuing their careers in Computer Software and Software Engineering studies. National ICT R&D Fund remains committed to facilitate high-quality ICT initiative by providing funding opportunities to concrete ICT related R&D proposals. For available funding opportunities and details on these and other funded projects please explore our site.

The team with Project Director, Dr. Fakhar Lodhi at FAST-NU, Lahore