GSoC Organization Application

[Aaron Meurer]

Organization applications are open for GSoC.

We need to update the ideas page.
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-Ideas. Feel free to delete
old ideas that are no longer relevant or add new ones.

We also need a rough count of mentors. If you are able to mentor
please add your name to the potential mentors list, and if you can no
longer mentor please remove it. I encourage anyone who was a
contributor last year to consider mentoring this year.
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-Ideas#potential-mentors

Finally, Google has issued some guidance about using AI for
applications. Basically, different orgs feel differently about it so
we need to have an explicit policy.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jglptdn_DovOxjwuhzORn3QhYoeBcToS7ymk3IIWHKY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.ib59d98mnz6q.
We should then update the template
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-Application-Template. My
suggestion would be to have a policy that LLMs are not allowed to be
used when writing the application, except for use for
translation/cleaning up the grammar of the text.

Aaron Meurer

[Rushabh Mehta]

On what grounds can a GSoC contributor from last year be considered for a mentoring position this year?

[Aaron Meurer]

Anyone who is an active contributor to SymPy can be a GSoC mentor. If
you were a successful GSoC contributor in the past, that is enough to
be a mentor.

Aaron Meurer

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+un...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/69459b99-5892-41f5-8271-2334729b8518n%40googlegroups.com.

[Aaron Meurer]

Also, just to be clear, I've "submitted" the application, which
basically just required me to fill out a form with a link to the ideas
page. But we should update the ideas page so that our application will
actually get accepted by Google.

Aaron Meurer

[Oscar Benjamin]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2026 at 17:48, Aaron Meurer <asme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My
> suggestion would be to have a policy that LLMs are not allowed to be
> used when writing the application, except for use for
> translation/cleaning up the grammar of the text.

I don't think that we should list any exceptions like that. The
reality is that if I am ranking applications then anything that
remotely looks like the output of an LLM will be straight in the bin.
It might be that they did not use an LLM but just wrote something that
resembles an LLM: it will still be in the bin. I don't think we should
allow anyone to be confused about that.

--
Oscar

[Arka Saha]

Hello Aaron and Oscar Sir, 

I am a contributor, but I had an idea which could be used as a GSoC project. As per as my knowledge this feature doesn't exist yet in SymPy, so I would like some validation and feedback from your end.

A robust hand written Mathematical symbolic expression pipeline, with formal verification, resolving for any ambiguity, and SymPy native parsing and evaluation.

Input is taken as a hand written math expression (image) and then output is given in form of SymPy Code or evaluated output.

Further, this can be implemented with a LLM to provide AI based insights on the expression  - if its accurate, logical or etc.

Please do provide your feedback for this idea. And, I am looking forward to working with you guys for this year's GSoC!

Thank You,

Arka Saha

[Aaron Meurer]

OK, I've simplified the AI policy to just "No AI used for the
application". https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-Application-Template#ai-policy

Aaron Meurer

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+un...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/CAHVvXxS_VNrJbPS_EKLyP%2BGiP7NN5zLYM7LJmHhrbx%2B0r-0k8A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Tirthankar Mazumder]

I've updated the Project Ideas page to add the project I worked on a few years ago: Improve the Lark LaTeX parser

I'm not sure if I will have the time to be a full-fledged mentor, but I will certainly be able to review PRs in this area.

Tirthankar Mazumder

[Oscar Benjamin]

We should probably add some project ideas to do with type annotations e.g.:

https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/28806

There are fairly large parts of the codebase where there can be lots
of bug fixes and other things that come as part of the process of
adding type annotations. It is also something clearly wanted by a lot
of end users, downstream libraries etc.

This one is about type annotations but also about more generally
cleaning up and restructuring the polys domains:

https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/27360

That could be a suitable project for the right kind of applicant.

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/7a681a13-c8bf-4ae0-b999-75b06b0b0156n%40googlegroups.com.

[Francesco Bonazzi]

On Thursday, January 22, 2026 at 6:48:27 p.m. UTC+1 Aaron Meurer wrote:

My suggestion would be to have a policy that LLMs are not allowed to be
used when writing the application, except for use for
translation/cleaning up the grammar of the text.

I would suggest to forbid any usage of LLMs during the application process. Candidates using LLMs to write their application should be disqualified immediately. Otherwise we will be unable to distinguish between AI-spam and genuine applications. I prefer reading applications in broken English rather than trying to figure out the degree in which a human or AI has written the application. 

[Jason Moore]

These are the two GSoC docs prepared by google:

AI Tooling Guidance

We have created two guidance documents, which are suggestions (not requirements) based on feedback from the 2025 Mentor Surveys:

• For Mentoring Orgs: Usage of AI tooling in Google Summer of Code 2026 (for Mentoring Orgs)

• For Contributors: Guidance for GSoC Contributors using AI tooling in GSoC 2026 doc

They are both good reads. Lots of alignment with our concerns.

A contributor survey showed 70% use AI to write their proposal. I have always valued a quality proposal most in ranking students, but I guess that is no use now.

Jason

moorepants.info
+01 530-601-9791

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+un...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/305f1104-5140-4fc3-aa92-580e88ac5c68n%40googlegroups.com.