Hidden Gems: Enabling Open Source Communities & Building up Talent Pipelines Through Mentorship
E143 | Fri 14 Jul 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Presented by
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Stephanie Lieggi is assistant director for the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) and the UC Santa Cruz Open Source Program Office (OSPO). In her current roles she supports the work of academic-based open source projects and enables a sustainable contributor base through the establishment of hands-on mentorship programs. Stephanie promotes the use of open source in academic settings as well as increasing diversity and inclusion in open source ecosystems.
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Carlos Maltzahn
@CarlosMaltzahn
https://people.ucsc.edu/carlosm
Carlos Maltzahn is the PI of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO), UC Santa Cruz and the founder and director of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS). He also co-founded the Systems Research Lab, known for its cutting-edge work on programmable storage systems, big data storage & processing, scalable data management, distributed system performance management, and practical reproducible evaluation of computer systems. Carlos joined UC Santa Cruz in 2004, after five years at Netapp working on network-intermediaries and storage systems. In 2005 he co-founded and became a key mentor on Sage Weil’s Ceph project. In 2008 Carlos became a member of the computer science faculty at UC Santa Cruz and has graduated nine Ph.D. students since. Carlos graduated with a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Colorado at Boulder. His work is funded by nonprofits, government, and industry, including the National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and CROSS.
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Jayjeet Chakraborty
https://jayjeetc.github.io
Jayjeet is a 2nd Year PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Computer Science and Engineering department. He is working on computer systems research especially in the field of Storage systems, Databases, Data management systems, and Computational storage. He has previously been part of several open source programs most notable of which is Google Summer of Code. Most of his research work is open-sourced and he tries to use open-source projects as much as possible as well. Previously, he has worked on building v2 of a programmable storage system called Skyhook which is maintained under another project in the Apache Software Foundation. Currently, he is working with Argonne National Labs on building faster data transport protocols that used modern networking technologies. Additionally, he is working with IRIS-HEP (Institute for Research in High Energy Physics) on building data management technologies for efficient processing of large High Energy Physics dataset. When not working, Jayjeet likes to explore new places, try new food, and gather new experiences.
Carlos Maltzahn
@CarlosMaltzahn
https://people.ucsc.edu/carlosm
Jayjeet Chakraborty
https://jayjeetc.github.io
Abstract
Skilled, effective mentorship on open source research projects can provide an opportunity for faculty and researchers to identify and bolster the work of hidden gems – including talented and driven students who never considered graduate school as part of their career trajectory. Since 2018, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS), and more recently the UCSC OSPO, has been matching talented student contributors with mentors and their open source research projects. Starting as a mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and then expanding mentoring efforts to include additional sponsors within the Open Source Research Experience (OSRE), the team at UCSC has worked to seed open source communities across multiple University of California (UC) campuses by bringing in new contributors to UC research projects. This presentation will look at what the OSRE team has learned from these hands-on mentoring efforts, and propose practical ways these types of programs can be replicated elsewhere to support the work of more academic open source ecosystems. To further highlight how programs like these can have real-world impact on students and open source communities, the discussion will feature the story of UCSC PhD student Jayjeet Chakraborty, who first came to the attention of the UCSC mentors through the GSoC program then developed into a key contributor to a CROSS incubator project, and was ultimately recruited into the computer science PhD program at UCSC. The presentation will explore Jayjeet's evolution through these roles, and how his experience can provide inspiration for engaging and empowering contributors, and assist with improving a project’s long-term impact and sustainability. The session will also focus on how this approach could be used to strengthen the pool of contributors supported by the OSRE and similar programs, including innovative ways of bringing open source education and relevant training to a broader cross-section of students.
Skilled, effective mentorship on open source research projects can provide an opportunity for faculty and researchers to identify and bolster the work of hidden gems – including talented and driven students who never considered graduate school as part of their career trajectory. Since 2018, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS), and more recently the UCSC OSPO, has been matching talented student contributors with mentors and their open source research projects. Starting as a mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and then expanding mentoring efforts to include additional sponsors within the Open Source Research Experience (OSRE), the team at UCSC has worked to seed open source communities across multiple University of California (UC) campuses by bringing in new contributors to UC research projects. This presentation will look at what the OSRE team has learned from these hands-on mentoring efforts, and propose practical ways these types of programs can be replicated elsewhere to support the work of more academic open source ecosystems. To further highlight how programs like these can have real-world impact on students and open source communities, the discussion will feature the story of UCSC PhD student Jayjeet Chakraborty, who first came to the attention of the UCSC mentors through the GSoC program then developed into a key contributor to a CROSS incubator project, and was ultimately recruited into the computer science PhD program at UCSC. The presentation will explore Jayjeet's evolution through these roles, and how his experience can provide inspiration for engaging and empowering contributors, and assist with improving a project’s long-term impact and sustainability. The session will also focus on how this approach could be used to strengthen the pool of contributors supported by the OSRE and similar programs, including innovative ways of bringing open source education and relevant training to a broader cross-section of students.