Ask HN: Seeking/have summer opportunities for undergraduate engineers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Seeking/have summer opportunities for undergraduate engineers?

4 pointshartzell2 comments

I was recently asked about suggestions for summer experiences for an undergraduate CS/Applied math student.

I'd like to see something that informs and encourages the engineering path, amps up her enthusiasm, and that provides some real world (industry or academic) experience.

I have some ideas: internship programs at large companies in my industry (biotech-ish); summer of code projects; and generally the kind of things I can find via my personal network and a search engine. I'm sure that I'm missing more than I'm digging up.

I suspect that there are probably:

- other folks in my situation who would love to hear about nerdy opportunities, perhaps with different emphases (e.g. contributing to a peer reviewed paper, or ...); and

- folks with opportunities who would love to get the word out.

If you have actionable ideas or opportunities to promote, please share them. Tell us what you're looking for, what you have to offer, if you're focusing on particular communities, if you offer support, and anything else that seems relevant.

If you're interested in summer of code projects, there's a good number of orgs in this year's google summer of code https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/

This year I'm helping mentor the ZynAddSubFX organization https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/6487755463... . Zyn is an open source musical synthesizer, so there's skills that are used in a number of domains, ranging from technical writing skills, to user experience knowhow, to musical backgrounds, user interface coding, hard realtime programming practices, to digital signal processing.

It's zyn's first year in GSoC, so it's going to be a learning experience on both sides, but it should be a good time. Outside of the official GSoC project we're always looking for contributors who are interested in learning new things.

I have a "summer of code" project. I'm a founder of Distribute Aid [1], a Swedish ngo that builds tech tools for refugee aid groups. We're an open source project [2] and are looking for people who can contribute.

There are opportunities to join us on the ground in Europe, or to volunteer remotely. We try to take a people-first approach and will match volunteers up with tasks / projects that they are most interested in. It's a great fit for students looking to build their resume while making substantial contributions to an important project.

If anyone is interested in learning more, shoot me an email at taylor /at/ distributeaid.org

[1]: https://distributeaid.org

[2]: https://gitlab.com/users/distribute-aid/projects

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