Google Sumer of Code Cohort 2022!
OREL is proud to have 3 accepted mentees from GSOC this year. Learn about our open source project for open source!
Orthogonal Research and Education Lab (OREL) is proud to host three accepted projects for Google Summer of Code 2022. Sponsored by the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF), our project is a cohort of three students focused on the proposal “A Collective Cognition Model for AI Ethics”.
Project Summary
A Collective Cognition Model to serve as automated guidelines to open source communities. The model will project the activities, interrelationships, to keep the community self-sustaining and to help people stay in the community and become contributors. This will be validated by the data generated by an Agent Based Model (ABM) and will serve as a verification component.
Similar to our GSoC efforts in the past, we expect unique approaches to the problem of Open Source and AI Ethics. This will build upon our strengths in open source development/community-building and the Society, Ethics, and Technology project. Now introducing this year’s cohort!
Himanshu Chougule (Mentee)
Himanshu Chougule is a second year undergraduate student pursuing a B.Tech degree in Information Technology from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Mumbai. For their GSoC project, Himanshu is applying multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods to build an analytical model of open source communities. Agent-based Modeling will be used to validate the MARL model by generating data, which in turn will encourage desired behaviors.
Brian McCorkle (Mentee)
Brian McCorkle is an undergraduate student of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at SUNY Albany. For their GSoC project, Brian is creating a computational model of Open Source combining Active Inference methods with a custom NetLogo simulation to approximate community behavior. This may be useful in the creation of auditing systems for organizations to evaluate the sustainability of their open source community.
S. Hussain Ather (Mentee)
Syed Hussain Ather is a Ph.D. student in Medical Science at the University of Toronto where they use neuroimaging techniques to study the connectivity structures underlying brain diseases. For their GSoC project, the Every Good Regulator Theorem (EGRT) will be leveraged to model the ethical regulation of open source communities.
Jesse Parent (Mentor)
Jesse Parent, B.S., is currently an Assistant Scientist and Lab Manager at OREL, as well as a Project Information Manager and Research Associate at a major HealthTech R&D firm. He is also an NSF CSGrad4US Fellow who aims to pursue graduate studies in Cognitive and Computational Sciences.
Jesse regularly contributes to mentoring and accessibility efforts, establishing a partnership for undergraduate students at OREL with SUNY Albany, and is developing a mentoring program for early career researchers. Jesse also has over five years of experience in the startup realm and has recently founded JOPRO (www.jopro.org) to further support innovative and interdisciplinary research.
Bradly Alicea (Mentor)
Bradly Alicea has a PhD from Michigan State University and has published in multiple academic fields represented by venues such as Nature Reviews Neuroscience, eLife, Neuroinformatics, Stem Cells and Development, Biosystems, and Artificial Life.
With academic interests spanning the biological, computational, and social sciences, Bradly’s open source endeavors include Head Scientist and Founder of Orthogonal Research and a Senior Contributor at the OpenWorm Foundation.
Bradly has been a Google Summer of Code mentor since 2017 and has been involved in numerous open source community building efforts such as the Rokwire Open Source Community, eLife Ambassadors program, and the Mozilla Open Fellows program. Please see Bradly’s personal website for more information.
