Looking for Mentor (for a PhD Candidate) that works with open source and Rust

TLDR: Searching for person holding professor position to officially act as a committee member on a US PhD defense

Hi all,

I'm in a non CS field. I'm doing PhD in hydrology and I'm good at Geospatial Analysis, data analysis, visualization, modeling and such. I really like programming and have been making open source programs, contributing to open source programs and such. And have been learning rust for last 2 years.

For my PhD dissertation I'm doing a project where I'll be using Rust to make a program with compiled plugin system that can do generalized river related tasks including data analysis and visualization. I have professors in GIS and hydrology to guide those aspects, but I don't have anyone on software side to ask questions, or to look at my work. I tried emailing some people I have seen with open source projects on GIS+rust, but no response.

I'm ideally looking for someone that holds a professor position for my committee who is good with either rust, GIS related algorithms development, and programming languages. However, it woud also be helpful to just have someone woth knowledge about such things. In either scenario, credit and authorship will be given.

I appreciate any response even telling where i could find someone matching the above description. :)

Edit: I can also provide my previous projects in GitHub, websites and such before you decide in messages.

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[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why not find the person in your university? You’re not gonna find anyone here. Your university definitely has one and if not your advisor definitely knows where.

You’ve passed prelims, how have you not had this discussion with them?

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I'm not from CS related field. Me and my advisor don't know professors in CS fields, and my university doesn't have CS grad programs when I looked around. And I need an external professor anyway. My friends that are in CS grad school all do AI/ML related research.

[–] Mavvik@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can't help with your search but I really think you should look into using Julia instead of rust. It provides excellent speed with the usability of Python and is growing in popularity among the scientific community. There are a few very good Geospatial libraries out there that you would probably find useful too.

Either way I recommend reaching out on the official language communities that tend to have more academics in them.

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you.

I did consider Julia in the beginning, but I'm using rust so I can make a python library available for people. And also because I can easily transfer other programs I have, and some other libraries in C into rust easily. My project is mostly about connecting the existing tools the grant agency has plus tools scientific communities use.

What do you mean by official language communities? I don't know what is rust official community. I am in rust discord but I have never gotten any response on any questions I ask about non trivial things there. I need people knowledgeable about macro, stable abi, and other features.

[–] Mavvik@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I meant stuff like that discord or the rust discourse. If you aren't having luck there your best bet is probably sending cold emails to faculty that have expertise in the field you need.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

OP needs to be asking for help with specific coding problems on there too as opposed to asking for a mentor like here because they'll get the same response. Also reiterating what I said in my comment about IRC being more helpful provided you send them a pastebin.

[–] hyperreal@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

In a similar spirit to the "why does it have to be in Rust" question, R already has a robust ecosystem of people doing research and writing packages for the physical sciences, even hydrology. What does writing a whole new system in a new language offer that can't be achieved with existing software?

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'd just use the #rust IRC channel on libera.chat personally.

Edit: Maybe for the basics/boilerplate you could start with ChatGPT or another generative AI. Then if you have a specific question you could ask the enthusiasts on the IRC channel. IRC people are a lot more helpful than discord people in my experience.

Should also mention there is no substitute for a good textbook so maybe getting a PDF of an Intro to Rust type book would be a good idea as well.