Student Grants

GRASS GIS offers a limited number of student grants for projects related to GRASS GIS (announcement 2023). These can include actual coding, bug fixing, or documentation and the creation of educational resources.

Why to apply

You will:

• receive mentorship by experienced open-source developers;
• gain programming skills;
• be able to add open-source development into your portfolio;
• get stipend.

Eligibility

To apply for a grant, a student must:

• be eighteen (18) years of age or older upon application;
• be enrolled into a post-secondary academic program, as of the beginning of the grant;
• for the duration of the grant, be eligible to work in the country in which they reside;
• and not be a GRASS GIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) member.

In addition, the student has to:

• demonstrate necessary skills and ability to contribute to GRASS GIS through a GitHub pull request (PR).

One person can be awarded one grant at a time, but can apply more than once at different times.

Stipend

• The maximum per grant is 1000 USD. Proposals can be for lower amounts.
• The time to complete the grant should be maximum 3 months, but shorter projects are possible. This depends on the money requested and applicant's availability.
• Start date is flexible.
• For the 2023 deadline, GRASS GIS will offer a total of 4000 USD for stipends.

Before you apply

• Express your interest in applying through the current GRASS community channels (grass-dev@osgeo.org mailing list, GitHub Discussions, or Gitter).
• Identify a topic matching your interest and skills.
• Look for ways to contribute to GRASS that are related to the selected topic (improve documentation, tests, fix bugs, etc.).
• Submit a PR.

How to apply

Students should:

• write their proposals as Google Documents (or similar collaborative online document creation platform) and
• send an email to grass-grants@osgeo.org to notify of their application (with the link to the document).

The email should contain:

• proof of eligibility
  • confirm you are 18 year of age or above and that you can work in the country in which you reside for the duration of the grant
  • proof of student status (e.g., scanned PDF)
  • link to a GRASS GIS PR or PRs (work in progress is okay at this point)

The proposal document should contain:

• applicant's name
• description of the proposed work
• timeline with activities and deliverables
• budget proposal

For timely proposals, applicants will receive feedback from the grants committee and mentors. Changes can be made to the proposal until the deadline. Proposals can be approved and work started even before the deadline.

Approval process

Project proposals are evaluated by the GRASS GIS Project Steering Committee within two weeks after the deadline and a notification will be sent to successful applicants.

Stipend payment

Stipend are paid in two amounts (unless stated otherwise for the specific grant):

• 50% at the beginning of the work phase
• 50% after reception and approval of the final report by the PSC

Final report

The final report should be also written in the GRASS GIS wiki under the proposal up to two weeks after the final date planned originally. When finished, the student sends an email to grass-psc mailing list to announce the end of the work and share the link to the final report. The final report should include:

• A description of the state of affairs before the work
• A description of the work done

Topics

The GRASS GIS community provides a list of topics highly relevant to the community. Applicants may suggest their own topics.

List of open topics:

• Improve documentation and tests for a set of tools
  • includes revising text, add missing/update examples with pictures, notebook how to generate the pictures, add tests (pytest)
  • requirements: Python
  • $100-200 per tool (proposal should include the total amount requested and budget justification)
  • list of suggested tools: r.sim.water, r.reclass, r.resample, r.resamp.filter, r.mask, r.mode, v.surf.idw, v.surf.rst, r.fillnulls, r.surf.*, …

• Write a tutorial on a selected topic
  • develop a tutorial showing usage of a tool or a combination of tools in a data science workflow
  • requirements: Python or R
  • $300-500 depending on the length and complexity (proposal should include the total amount requested and budget justification)
  • list of suggested tutorials: interpolation methods, resampling methods, hydrology, remote sensing, species distribution modeling, how to setup a project, import data, use computational region, ...

• v.geometry - reimplement as a wrapper to v.to.db, add tests, examples and documentation
  • must include tests and documentation
  • requirements: Python
  • $500

• r.rescale - reimplement as a wrapper to r.recode (see https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/1986), add tests, examples and documentation
  • must include tests and documentation
  • requirements: Python
  • $500

• Parallelize a tool with OpenMP
  • possible candidates: r.mapcalc, r.proj, v.surf.idw
  • must include tests and benchmarks
  • requirements: C, OpenMP experience
  • $1000 (one tool)

• Improve d.vect.chart
  • fix legend (see https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/3100), update documentation, add tests
  • must include documentation, examples, and basic tests
  • requirements: basic C and Python
  • $500

• Add JSON output to different tools in C
  • see this issue for the latest state
  • must include tests and basic documentation
  • requirements: C
  • $500 for one tool (proposal should include the total amount requested and budget justification)

See selected topics from past years: Space-Time Dataset Visualization and Improved Interactive Maps for grass.jupyter, Redesigning a map display status bar combo box into a new settings dialog

Mentors

• Anna Petrasova
• Vaclav Petras
• Yann Chemin

Acknowledgements

The student stipends are sourced from the financial support the GRASS project receives from sponsors on Open Collective and the OSGeo Foundation. Time of mentors is covered by individual mentors or their employers.

In-kind contributions of personnel time:

• North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics
• Department of Geomatics, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague

Personal time: Vaclav Petras, Anna Petrasova, Helena Mitasova, Stephan Blumentrath, Martin Landa