Google is re-organising itself into Alphabet, Google Summer of Code 2015 announced 'Pencils down' date in two weeks and ResearchGate informed me about reaching 200 publication downloads.
Well, being in the 3rd year of my PhD the number of publications, views and citations might not be outstanding but it is continuous progress along the early researcher path and a form of acknowledgement.
The GSoC project work with GeoTreliis and Azavea is also great opportunity to get more involved with Big Data technologies like Apache Spark and Cassandra and cloud technologies. The support from the project team, notably Rob and Chris, but also vibe on the GeoTrellis Gitter channel is fantastic.
Although it's time to wrap up GSoC in the next weeks, it is also the starting point of getting these new software development insights applied to my research in the SMART aquifer characterisation (SAC) programme, where I develop tools and web platforms for the SMART data portal. If all goes well, the SMART data portal will be overhauled end of this year and my PhD completed early next year :-)
