Introduction

[Aryan Shukla]

Hey all,

My name is Aryan Shukla, username: Telomelonia, and I am currently an engineering undergrad(3rd year) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, with a major in Material Science and Metallurgy and a specialization in Full Stack development and Machine learning from Amazon.

I love to solve real science problems with the help of ML/DL and software. Thus, I found MDAnalysis intriguing and want to contribute and learn from this compelling repo. I already had made 1 PR. I am also interested in taking part as a contributor to GSOC projects. 

[Rocco Meli]

Hello Aryan,

Welcome to MDAnalysis!

# Contributing to MDAnalysis

In the first instance, we recommend our User Guide for getting to know MDAnalysis:

   https://userguide.mdanalysis.org/

The User Guide contains a lot of information about MDAnalysis, as well as a section on how to contribute to the project:

   https://userguide.mdanalysis.org/contributing.html

On our GitHub repository (https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis) we have several issues labelled as "difficulty-easy" and/or "good-first-issue", which are a good starting point for new developers.

For questions about the project we have several communication channels. Besides the MDAnalysis-discussion (about usage) and MDAnalysis-develop (about contributing/developing) mailing lists, we have a Discord Server that anyone can join:

   https://discord.gg/fXTSfDJyxE

By joining the MDAnalysis Discord Server, and by starting to work with the MDAnalysis community, you agree to our Code of Conduct:

   https://www.mdanalysis.org/pages/conduct/

# Participating to Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

GSoC 2023 has been announced by Google and the MDAnalysis organisation decided to re-apply this year. Likely we won't hear about whether or not MDAnalysis has been selected to participate to GSoC until the end of February. Until Google makes a decision on participating organisations, there is always a chance that MDAnalysis might not be selected this year.

For the time being you can have a look at the MDAnalysis FAQ for GSoC from the previous year:

   https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis/wiki/GSoC-FAQ

We will most likely have a very similar process to 2022. You can have a look at the list of Project Ideas we intend to propose this year:

  https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis/wiki/GSoC-2023-Project-Ideas

Please have a look at the "Relevant Skills" section for each project to make sure you have the relevant skills, or that you can acquire such skills during the application process. Given the  scope of MDAnalysis as scientific package for particle-based simulations, we especially value skills related to domain knowledge (molecular dynamics, computational chemistry, computational physics, ...) together with programming skills.

You can start contributing to MDAnalysis as explained above, and stay tuned for more announcements about GSoC.

The MDAnalysis community looks forward working with you.

Rocco